Vietnam’s casinos have joined the global shutdown movement sparked by the persistent spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

On Tuesday, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued a directive detailing a variety of social distancing measures intended on minimizing further spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures, which will remain in effect until at least April 15, include a prohibition on public gatherings of more than two people.

Vietnam acted early to bar tourists from affected countries such as China and South Korea, which helped limit its current exposure to around 200 confirmed COVID-19 infections. Most of these cases are centered around two clusters at a Ho Chi Minh City hospital and a restaurant in the south of the country. The government aims to keep the number of infections below 1,000 for as long as possible.

Several local casinos have now signalled that they will comply with the government’s directive, including the unfortunately named Corona Resort and Casino on Phu Quoc island, which was one of the few gaming venues selected to participate in the government’s trial of allowing locals to set foot on a casino floor.

At least when I was in iGaming operations, working from home was one of those mythical things that most people heard about, but never got to experience. Sure, some people had company blackberries, iPhones or laptops, but the majority of the job still got done in the office, because that’s where everybody was supposed to be.

Even as technology improved, and we had the capability to have entire teams work remotely, very few did. Although we emphasized that each of us should be responsible to our work, and respect our teams’ ability to work without heavy oversight, there was this feeling that very few could accomplish their goals without someone hovering over them.

That might be starting to change. Due to the conditions imposed on all of us during this COVID-19 outbreak, more people are working from home than ever before. I don’t have a study to prove that, but I just feel it to be true. And while gambling operations have encouraged staff to be at the office and be with their teams in the past, they’re being forced to adapt to remote working arrangements in the moment.

Is this all temporary, or will businesses find there are benefits to having more flexible working arrangements long term? My hunch is that they will. Allowing responsible individuals the option to decide on their own work environments has an obvious cost savings in office space, but could also lead to more motivated employees who contribute more over the long run. And as many of us are discovering from our home offices, when there’s no office complex to escape after an 8 hour shift, people tend to put in longer hours, too.

Some Premier League teams look great from the moment they take to the field of play on the first day of the season. Others come together across the 10 months in takes to win the English Premier League.

The Arsenal team of 2001/02 was always going to be a threat, but in wresting the title away from Manchester United, they arguably paved the way for both a change of tactics and an alternative mentality forever after their success.

The season began with The Red Devils favourites to make it four in a row against The Gunners. Between 1996 and 2004, the only teams to win the English Premier League were Arsenal and United, and it looked like another toe-to-toe battle between the two teams. While that was mostly true, Liverpool would feature and eventually finish in second place in the league in what was a decent season for The Reds.

Arsenal had reacted to their third failed attempt in a row to stop United winning the league by bringing in defensive reinforcements and a ‘fox in the box’, who would turn out to be as much use as a fox in the henhouse instead. Francis Jeffers arrived with much fanfare for £10 million from Everton, but famously started just two league games. Instead, the trio of Sylvain Wiltord, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp all starred in a multi-faceted front line.

Undoubtedly, people are getting as tired of hearing about the coronavirus as they are having to live in self-isolation. However, these aren’t normal times and the rulebook has been thrown out the window. As everyone waits and hopes that the global economy will start to be restored soon, the casino industry has been hit extremely hard, with losses expected to run in the upper eleven-figure range. This is forcing some casino operators to cut back on expenses everywhere they can, and this is also going to impact a lot of shareholders who would have normally been eligible for dividends.

Star Entertainment Group out of Australia has announced that it is breaking from its standard policies, and won’t be issuing a final dividend for the fiscal year that concludes on June 30. Typically, the casino operator, which just cut its workforce by 90%, has given at least 70% of post-tax normalized profits to shareholders, but the coronavirus makes this an unrealistic proposition.  Additionally, Star Entertainment is going to defer the first-half dividend payment from today to July 2.

A similar situation has been seen with Wynn Macau, the Asian arm of Wynn Resorts. A final dividend expected to be paid to shareholders for last year’s performance will not be handed out, and the company’s Board explains, “During this unprecedented COVID-19 crisis, the Board’s primary focus is on safeguarding its Macau operations and most importantly the well-being of its over 13,000 employees. The Board will be continuously monitoring the situation and market conditions in Macau and Greater China and may consider a special dividend in the future when such conditions have stabilized.”

Wynn Macau already began taking a financial beating before COVID-19. Its net profit dropped 19% last year compared to a year earlier, and operating revenue also dipped by 8.7%. VIP table games win dropped 24.9%, while the table games win for the mass market segment ticked upward by 5.9%.

In the time of COVID-19, land based operations, including lotteries, are taking a huge hit as quarantine and shut down orders prevent people from going out to buy a ticket. But a Spinola Gaming report indicates that this has been a net gain for the online lottery space, and land-based operations better adapt fast or lose out long term.

In China alone, retail lottery sales saw a 43.3% year over year decline in January, as that country began to see how coronavirus would soon affect the rest of the world. Spinola Gaming notes that South America and India are now seeing similar declines.

But while China had the first major problems with COVID-19, the U.S. now leads the world with the most infections. On March 31, a total of 183,532 cases had been reported stateside, with 3,727 total fatalities. As states fight to contain the virus, lotteries have taken a huge hit.

Massachusetts lottery revenues dropped by $1.3 million in the second week of March. Arkansas saw a $3.6 million revenue drop from January to February, and Ohio based lottery terminals are expected to be closed soon.

Jeju Island, South Korea is a unique international travel hotspot that offers diverse activities for tourists. This is part of the reason it has been chosen as an ideal location for casinos and integrated resorts (IR), with eight of the country’s gambling venues located there. At least two more IRs have been planned, including Landing International’s Jeju Shinhwa World and New Silkroad Culturaltainment’s Glorious Hill, but development isn’t occurring as quickly as anticipated. Both of these properties are way behind schedule and developers are in the process of trying to secure more funding to keep their South Korean island dreams alive.

According to a filing by Landing, it is going to issue new shares so that it can gather additional capital to continue working on its IR on Jeju. The company, which already operates the Landing Casino at the site, is ready to place 586,979,742, increasing its issued shares by 20%, at $0.23 each. That will allow it to pick up just under $17.7 million in net proceeds to help cover the more than $1-billion price tag of the property.

Landing has had a difficult couple of years, and last year’s final numbers weren’t impressive. In 2018, the company reported a loss of around $90.4 million, and 2019 was worse with a reported loss of $274.7 million. The bulk of that negative impact came from Landing Casino, which saw its revenue drop by 85.7%.

In order to try to put the casino back on track, it is going to start to “regularly organize regional and global poker and baccarat gaming tournaments as part of its ongoing efforts to promote and position Jeju Shinhwa World as a desirable destination resort.” In addition, it will host “marketing promotions, events, reward scheme, competitive mass and VIP gaming programs will launch continuously to energize the business in the future.”

Betting in face of COVID-19

The current situation facing the gambling industry is one which we could have barely anticipated, but we still have to work through regardless. To better equip operators to offer services during the time of COVID-19, Smile Expo has organized this online conference to help firms minimize their losses, and push new products.

The two day event will be streamed live over two days, with talks on esports, sports betting and fantasy sports, as well as a look ahead to how the industry will recover once it’s all over. For those who attend, it will also offer unique virtual networking opportunities. For those who can’t make it live, recorded videos of the talks will be available.

What: Betting in face of COVID-19

Macau’s casino gaming revenue suffered yet another dramatic plunge in March, suggesting that the market’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is anything but over.

Figures released Wednesday by Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) show overall casino gaming revenue of MOP5.25b (US$657.5m), a 79.7% decline from the same month last year. Over the first three months of 2020, total revenue is down 60% to MOP30.5b.

While March’s total was around two-thirds higher than February’s abysmally low MOP3.1b (-87.8% year-on-year), Macau’s casinos were forced to close for 15 days in February to minimize further transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus. As of mid-March, around 80% of Macau casino tables were back in action, albeit with social distancing restrictions.

Trouble is, there just weren’t any customers flocking to Macau last month, and that situation doesn’t look ready to improve anytime soon. China has yet to resume issuing exit visas under its individual visit scheme and last week saw authorities in Guangdong province – from which Macau draws most of its mainland customers – impose new quarantine restrictions on travelers returning from Macau.