What with there being very little in the way of sport happening, how are gamblers - and by extension, is the gambling industry - doing at the moment?
I presume that actual gambling addicts are still able to find things to get their fix (Belarusian under-16’s mixed double curling… - bring it on!) - but for professional and hobby gamblers, what are you guys up to?
And what will be the short, medium and long-term impacts of CV for the gambling industry?
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Our state lottery is still running and they sell tickets online as well as in stores. I think most state lotteries are still running.
I would think one could gamble online all they want. Blackjack, poker, craps, slots and video poker, etc. Don’t need brick and mortar to give your money away to rich stockholders.
Fanduel is promoting betting on a variety of eSports, which I expected, and reality TV shows, which I didn’t.
My understanding is that online poker (or, at least, playing online poker for money) is now illegal in most states, as a result of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.
All the casinos in Las Vegas are closed, as are all the sportsbooks. Four of them were still open on their mobile apps, but AFAIK, the wagers have mostly been on Russian hockey, soccer in Turkey and a few other weird competitions and prop bets; there hasn’t been much to bet on, after all.
In the coronavirus sports void, these are the desperate bets gamblers are making:
They have saved themselves $500 million, because that is how much I had planned to win during our trip to Vegas this week that got cancelled.
When I lived in Thailand, it was reported that since it was also illegal there, one way that people who lost avoided paying was to let their credit-card companies know what those charges were actually for. Something about the company would then cancel payment or get the payment back. Would only work one time of course, as the online site would not have anything else to do with you.
The big lotteries are lowering their initial jackpots since sales are way down. E.g., Powerball is starting with an $20M jackpot instead of $40M and they are giving lower increments for future lotteries. (The “The next jackpot will be …” stuff.)
Note that the odds for these games are terrible to begin with. They only begin to get okay (in theory) once the jackpots get really, really big. And that is going to take much longer to achieve.
Presumably the drop in big lottery game sales is also reflected in the sales of scratchers and such.
States like Oregon that derive a large fraction of the gaming income from video poker are going to take a big hit.
It’ll be interesting to see what this does to casinos. Not all of them are huge margin businesses, like the smaller regional ones or the smaller players in Vegas.
Of course, the unknowns here are how long the lockdown lasts but also how bad the economy is afterwards, what people are willing to spend, and how quickly they are willing to go back to casinos even if the doors are open again. It’s quite up in the air.
Casinos do OK in a recession but they stay open then. With this there probably will be some who don’t survive.
This is exactly the time to jump in to the market and start running numbers! Maybe run it off the cents on the day-ending Dow or something.
Reported.
What’s the over/under on how long it takes the spam post to be corn-fielded?
It is way over now…
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