When the world went into lockdown during the winter and spring of 2020, land-based casinos shut down with them. With their favorite land-based casinos closed, gambling critics worried that frequent gamblers would turn into problem gamblers as they shifted their activities online. As it turns out, those worrywarts got themselves all worked up for nothing. This news comes via a study by the Pisan Clinical Physiology Institute of the National Research Council.
During the lockdown, researchers from the institute queried 4,000 people to see how their gambling habits had changed during the quarantine. Of the initial 4,000 contacted, only about 920 admitted to regular gambling at a land-based operator. About that same amount admitted that they’d gambled via an online casino in recent weeks.
Once the gamblers were separated from the herd, they were asked a series of questions about how quarantine had impacted their gambling habits.
Oddly enough, about 12 percent somehow managed some form of land-based gambling during this period, while 10 percent continued online gambling. This is likely the result of scratch cards and lottery tickets being included in the list of land-based gambling and the fact that there were no sports to wager on.
The big news for land-based casino operators out of the study is that only about 33 percent
of those players who continued gambling during lockdown actually increased their online gambling. This means that, in Italy anyways, the casino and lottery vendors will see a lot of return business as the country reopens.
Whether this turns out to be the case in all countries, is something that remains to be seen.