Casinos in Wales were able to reopen their doors for the first time in months on Monday. But while it’s a welcome indication of life taking another step back towards normality, there are nevertheless difficult times ahead for the sector.
Measures in place
Jonathan Swain is the Managing Director of Grosvenor Casinos, which saw all 52 of its venues across England and Wales reopen on Monday. He said that everyone at Grosvenor has been “counting the days” till they could welcome customers back through the doors and added that they have been working tirelessly to implement “robust health and safety measures” in line with government guidelines. These include the mandatory wearing of facemasks, regular cleaning of gaming terminals and limits on player numbers at any one time.
Are customers ready to return?
There has been widespread impatience to get back to normal so far as revisiting shops, pubs and restaurants is concerned. But is there the same appetite for casino gaming in Wales? Plenty has changed over the past year or so, and new ways have been found of doing things. Online casinos have exploded in popularity, both in Wales and across the rest of the UK, and indeed the world.
That’s nothing new, online platforms had been steadily growing in popularity since long before anyone heard of social distancing and lockdowns. However, events over recent months have driven those who might otherwise have stuck to physical casinos to explore the ones in cyberspace – and many might decide to stay there.
Difficult to compete
An online casino platform has certain inherent advantages over a casino in the real world, and these can give it a distinct competitive edge. The most obvious relates to overheads. Clearly, a casino in cyberspace has lower operating costs. No facilities maintenance, very little staffing, probably no business rates, the list goes on and on. It means they can afford to operate at lower margins, therefore running games at a lower house edge that gives punters a better chance of winning.
They also have more flexibility. Land-based casinos are still highly cash-oriented, while online platforms offer dozens of different deposit methods. It’s like the difference between night and day. On top of that, casinos in cyberspace have more flexibility in the range of games they can offer. Games like online roulette and blackjack are as popular in virtual casinos as they are in real ones. But online platforms can also experiment with including more obscure games as they are not constrained by the number of cabinets they can fit onto the casino floor.
All about the experience
Of course, despite those advantages, playing games on a phone is never going to be the same as a night out at the casino. To get the footfalls back on the floors, the casinos of Wales need to focus on the experience like never before. But they would also do well to consider those aspects of online casinos that can be replicated in the real world. After all, web-based alternatives are here to stay, even when things return completely back to normal.