Las Vegas casinos are all starting to make their plans for an eventual re-opening, whenever that may be. As many of the bigger resorts are publishing the safety guidelines they will follow when Governor Steve Sisolak allows gambling to resume, at least one downtown casino is following the lead of Penn National Gaming and hiring a local firm to install sneezeguards.

Las Vegas-based Screaming Images, run by James Swanson, has started developing safety shields to install at table games and slot machines. The clear acrylic shields can be installed in 15 minutes, and would protect the players from each other, and the dealer, from unwanted airborne spray.

First word of a Las Vegas casino installing sneeze guard-style dividers at table games (similar to photo): El Cortez. pic.twitter.com/j9zGGPaRtT

— Vital Vegas (@VitalVegas) April 27, 2020

US regional casino operator Boyd Gaming lost $18.3m in the first quarter of 2020 as the pandemic-related shutdown of its gaming venues left the operator scrambling to keep the lights on.

Two months ago, Boyd was on top of the world, reporting gains across all its geographic segments and finishing 2019 with profits up more than one-third. By mid-March, the company had been forced to shut all 29 of its properties due to the COVID-19 outbreak and those properties remain shut to this day.

On Tuesday, Boyd issued preliminary financial results for the first three months of 2020, in which revenue fell nearly 18% year-on-year to $680.5m, operating income plunged 71.6% to $33.3m and the company booked a net loss of $18.3m versus a $45.5m profit in Q1 2019.

All three of Boyd’s geographic segments were broadly negative, led by the dominant Midwest & South casinos, where revenue fell nearly $100m to $445.6m and earnings (before rent expenses) dropped by more than $50m to $105.8m.

Japanese pachinko parlors are proving harder to kill than Godzilla, despite public shaming by some local governors.

Earlier this month, some Japanese politicians expressed displeasure at the reluctance of some pachinko operators to shut their doors to reduce the spread of COVID-19. But the national emergency declared by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe didn’t arm local governors with the authority to actually order the businesses to close.

Politicians responded with the only tools at their disposal: publicly naming and shaming pachinkos that remained open. In Tokyo, Governor Yuriko Koike said Tuesday that 156 pachinkos had closed following public pressure but hundreds of others are believed to remain open.

Things have gone less smoothly in Osaka prefecture, where around 30 pachinkos were still open going into last weekend. Agence France Press reported that Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura had publicly shamed nine operators, although this has resulted in only some of them closing their doors.

The SBC Digital Summit (SDS) continues to serve as a much-needed beacon for the global gaming industry, allowing those tied to the industry to share their thoughts and views on how the current coronavirus pandemic has upended everything. While there is little doubt that the economic impact caused by the current health situation is going to be felt for a very long time, there has also been some positive activity to emerge from COVID-19’s wrath. Spain and Latin America (LatAm) gaming operations were two of the big topics at the SDS this afternoon, and what’s coming down the pipe is expected to be a bigger, stronger and more regulated gaming industry.

Some of Spain’s leading gaming operators got together for a panel discussion on how the coronavirus is reshaping the country’s gambling scene. Represented were Bettson Group, Rank Group, Interwetten and Bet Entertainment, and the general consensus was one of a unified stance in response to the pandemic, as well as government-implemented restrictions. The operators were given little notice – two days, in most cases – to put lockdown policies in place, and the operators were able to pull it off without too much difficulty.

One policy implemented by the government caught everyone off guard, though. Spain’s leaders decided to force gaming operators to turn off all types of advertising and promotions, a move that no one had anticipated, at least not to the degree to which the government took it. Whether or not legislators took advantage of the coronavirus to lock down gaming or if it was, in fact, nothing more than a response to the current situation won’t be seen until after operators are allowed to return to business. Of course, in the meantime, the legal, regulated gaming industry will once again suffer against black market operators who remain active outside the law.

Four other panels were held that addressed specifically the LatAm market, with panelists exploring the region as a whole, as well as two of the major areas currently seeing the most movement in the gaming space – Brazil and Colombia. Across the entire region, the majority of the countries have created regulations that allow for land-based gaming operators to make an easy transition into the virtual, or digital, realm. This is going to lead to a great push toward online gaming operations, provided the proper legal and legislative frameworks can be implemented.

Sweden’s state-run gambling firms Svenska Spel and Ab Trav Och Galopp (ATG) both saw increased profits in the first quarter of 2020, a time in which most of the market’s private online gambling licensees struggled.

An interim report covering the three months ending March 31 shows Svenska Spel’s revenue effectively unchanged from the same period last year at SEK2.05b (US$207.8m), while operating profit shot up 35% to SEK701m and net profit rose one-third to SEK545m, in part due to the company reducing its marketing expenses.

Svenska Spel’s dominant Tur lottery division reported revenue rising 4% year-on-year to SEK1.14b thanks to a string of high jackpots. The Sport & Casino unit saw its revenue dip 1% to SEK538m, largely due to the mid-March cancellation of live sports due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The already struggling Casino Cosmopol & Vegas unit’s revenue fell 11% to SEK372m as gamblers got leery about congregating in large groups in small areas. Svenska Spel closed its four casinos in March and the Vegas gaming machine business suffered as restaurants and bingo halls also shut their doors.

The online casino vertical is helping a lot of sites get through COVID-19, but not all casino products are doing exactly the same, and they all face changes as a result of the pandemic. On the second day of the SBC Digital Summit, a pair of panels took a look at how casino products are doing.

First was a discussion on Live Casino, moderated by Karolina Pelc, owner of Basic Strategy, with panelists Tim de Borle, COO of Napoleon Sports & Casino, Sam Brown, CCO of Hero Gaming, Jeremy Taylor, Managing Director of Genting Online, and Richard Atkinson, Head of Live Casino at William Hill. Live casino has the unique iGaming problem of how to run a stupid with social distancing and quarantine in effect.

For Napolean, de Borle noted that they had to implement distancing and cleaning standards at their studio, not because the government demanded it, but because their dealers would have been terrified otherwise. Ultimately though, the company was able to maintain the business, albeit with reduced capacity.

Pelc commented that she’s heard much the same from many of her clients. But not all stuios have remained open, as Taylor noted that for Genting, the operator took the proactive decision to close studios when clubs closed.

German authorities’ war on online casino payment processing continues unabated, while German sports bettors have effectively given up trying to wager now that the pandemic has halted major sports events.

On Monday, the Ministry of Interior and Sport in the state of Lower Saxony announced that it had “once again prohibited an internationally active payment service provider from participating in payment transactions in connection with illegal gaming in Germany.”

Minister Boris Pistorius, whose brief oversees activity across Germany, reminded financial services firms that they are “legally obliged to refrain from making payments in connection with illegal gambling – if they do not, we will take action.” The Ministry said Monday that “further prohibition orders are in preparation” against other processors.

The offending company went unmentioned, as did the company that Lower Saxony targeted last summer, although it was widely presumed to be PayPal, which announced two months later that it was suspending its German online casino payment channels. It’s possible that the offending company this time around might also be PayPal, as word surfaced this January that some German-facing operators were reinstating PayPal as an option.

Finland’s online gamblers will now be subjected to strict monthly loss limits for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, while lottery draws will be suspended entirely.

On Tuesday, Finland’s Interior Ministry announced that the ‘fast-paced gambling games’ available from local gambling monopoly Veikkaus would now be subject to monthly per customer loss limits of €500, down from their previous cap of €2k.

The online limits, which will take effect on May 1 and extend through September 30, will apply to eBingo, virtual betting and online slots and table games (excluding poker). The limits will also apply to online lotteries, although all lottery draws will be temporarily suspended as of May 4. Players will also be required to set their own daily and monthly loss limits that cannot exceed the maximum stated above.

Minister Maria Ohisalo said the new limits were necessary to reduce the potential for gambling harm and would persist even if the pandemic threat recedes before September 30, based on her belief that “consumers’ financial difficulties as a result of the epidemic are likely to continue for longer.”