Businesses of every size and type will be counting the cost of the Covid pandemic and the ensuing lockdown for months and years to come. But one fact that became immediately apparent was the critical importance of ecommerce during these unprecedented times.
Those businesses that had an online presence were able to weather the storm far better than those who did not ? and some even found themselves busier than usual.
The casino sector is probably the most dramatic example of this principle in action. We all saw the sobering TV footage of Las Vegas in lockdown, and these scenes, reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic disaster movie, were echoed in resorts and cities across the world. Yet we also know that online gaming saw a massive surge during lockdown, with spending hitting record highs.
Live gaming the big winner
You don’t need an MBA to see the message. Those casinos that were purely land-based saw turnover drop to exactly zero, while their online counterparts were busier than they had ever been before. But the biggest winners were those who were able to transplant the Vegas style gaming experience into cyberspace. That’s where the concept of live casino gaming comes to the fore and some of the best live casinos have had new members beating down their virtual doors over the past few weeks.
Bridging the gap between the online and virtual worlds is a concept with which we have all become familiar since March. Skype conference calls and Zoom parties have been all the rage. But it is something that the casino platforms have been doing since long before Covid. In a live casino game, the player can interact with a real dealer, conversing via a chat box and watching the cards dealt or the wheel spun in real time via a webcam. It makes the game more authentic than simply watching virtual cards on a screen, but is also more social. Just as in a real casino, there will be other players around the gaming table, so it is no longer a solitary experience.
More games available than ever
Recent months have promoted live gaming from an interesting gimmick to one of the mainstay offerings in the online casino sector. That’s good news for gamers, as it means increased investment, better games and more choice.
It will come as no surprise that the most popular games in a traditional casino are also the biggest hits online. That means every casino will have plenty of blackjack tables, roulette wheels and baccarat games to choose from. But more tables means more options in terms of variations in the game rules and also tables with diverse betting limits to meet the needs of every type of customer.
Casinos are also pushing the boundaries to attract new customers, offering everything from reinventions of old card games like cribbage for the online age to their own versions on TV shows like Deal or No Deal. Live casino gaming’s popularity seems set to continue for as long as social distancing remains an issue, so expect that choice to continue to grow.
