South Korea’s largest casino will reopen to the public on Friday following a nearly 11-week pandemic-related shutdown.

On Thursday, Kangwon Land casino, the only South Korean casino in which local residents are allowed to gamble, announced that it would reopen some of its offering to the public as of noon on Friday, May 8. That’s three days earlier than the company forecast late last month, when it issued the property’s seventh shutdown extension order.

Kangwon Land shut its doors on February 23 to minimize further spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Its two main foreigner-only casino rivals – Grand Korea Leisure and Paradise Co Ltd – followed suit one month later. Paradise restarted its operations in April, while GKL announced its resumption of activity just this week.

With South Korea’s COVID-19 new infection rate having slowed to a trickle, Kangwon Land apparently feels it’s time to get back to earning. The company announced earlier this week that its lost revenue opportunity would likely total KRW286.8b (US$233.7m), based on 2019’s average daily revenue, but now says that the three-day advance opening will likely reduce this to KRW267.8b, so, er, hooray.

Football is coming home. After a seven-week hiatus, the Bundesliga is the first major European League to return to action next week as the ban on the ball is lifted. But with so many countries still worried about the consequences of COVID-19, what measures have been put in place to maintain a healthy distance from the Coronavirus and stop the spread of anything other than football fever?

Level 1 – Sensible and safe measures

Let’s be honest, some of the measures that have been put forward to stop the Coronavirus are ones that should have been mandatory before the outbreak even begun.

Washing hands is something that regular daily life should demand without question, but since the outbreak began, sporting stars have taking turns encouraging everyone to sing the National Anthem (or football chant of your choice) to last no less than 20 seconds while you scrub up.

Online gambling operator ComeOn Group has shut two of its Swedish-licensed brands after protesting the government’s plans to limit online casino deposits and bonuses.

This week, ComeOn informed its marketing affiliate partners that it had “decided to close down operations” of its Sveacasino.com and Cherrycasino.com brands “in Sweden only.” The company said it had “relinquished” the licenses issued by Sweden’s Spelinspektionen regulatory body for these brands.

The two sites have already stopped accepting new customers and deposits, while “all existing Swedish player accounts” on these sites will be closed as of May 18. The company suggested that Swedish players on the two sites check out its ComeOn site, one of many brands still operated by the ComeOn/Cherry family in Sweden, including Hajper, Snabbare and Mobilautomaten.

Spelinspektionen has yet to update its list of online licensees to reflect ComeOn’s reduced footprint, but the regulator announced Thursday that it had issued a new online gambling license to Alea Ltd, which plans to operate in Sweden using its Slottsmillion brand.

US casino operator Hard Rock International (HRI) has lost its latest bid to challenge the awarding of a Greek casino license to rival Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment (MGE).

On Thursday, Greece’s Council of State, the nation’s top administrative court, rejected HRI’s appeal of the Hellenic Gaming Commission (HGC) decision to award MGE the sole casino license for the €8b Hellinikon integrated resort project.

The HGC awarded the license to MGE and its local construction partner GEK Terna in January after disqualifying HRI – the only other operator to make the finals of this derby – due to HRI’s alleged failure to provide a bank guarantee demonstrating the company’s capacity to fund a project of Hellinikon’s magnitude.

HRI CEO Jim Allen scoffed at this view, saying the National Bank of Greece had missed the filing of this guarantee by a mere four days, while simultaneously claiming that HRI had “the strongest financial balance sheet in the industry.” HRI has also alleged that the HGC favored MGE’s bid from the start, based on an MGE lawyer’s presence on the Hellinikon license tender committee.

In order to use any mobile sportsbook in Nevada, sports gambling enthusiasts must first register at a casino. While the practice has been seen as a deterrent to new signups because of the hassle, the coronavirus pandemic made the practice all but nonexistent. As stay-at-home orders begin to be relaxed, South Point Hotel Casino has taken a unique approach to allowing registrations while ensuring they comply with standing social distancing protocols. The casino now offers a “registration drive-thru” for those who want to sign up for online gambling.

The drive-thru, which opened yesterday, is only for registrations – not for placing bets, although who’s to say that option couldn’t be added in the future. Since Nevada’s governor, Steve Sisolak, is keeping casinos and sportsbooks closed for a little longer, online wagers are the only types found, and South Point is making sure it does everything it can to make the registration process as easy as possible. With several sports organizations ready to relaunch their activity this month, the timing couldn’t be better.

The UFC and NASCAR have announced that they will soon be holding competitions, so every sportsbook is going to want to get in on the action. However, virtual books have the upper hand because of the lockdown and social distancing rules, and South Point knows this. It has converted its valet entrance into the makeshift registration drive-thru, allowing anyone 21 years old or older to sign up and make their first deposit without having to leave their vehicle. The registration desk will run daily from 11 AM to 6 PM.

No one knows when the sports leagues will be back on their feet – the MLB and NBA are talking about resuming games sometime this summer, and MLS just announced that it is beginning to allow voluntary practices as a precursor to a resumption of games. In Europe, both the Bundesliga in Germany and the Premier League in the UK are close to starting their soccer activity, as well. In the meantime, though, sportsbooks need everything they can grab to offer lines in order to keep their operations afloat.

Crown Resorts, Okada Manila and Wynn Resorts have a few things in common. In addition to the obvious – they belong to the casino industry – they are also experiencing cuts in their financial systems due to COVID-19 that is causing them to bleed money. The coronavirus has put more than a small handful of casino operators in a debilitating condition and, like a shark on the prowl, Las Vegas Sands (LVS)may try to take advantage of one or more injured casino operators to swallow it whole.

This is essentially the position Union Gaming’s John DeCree puts forth in a recent update on his take of LVS and its owner and founder Sheldon Adelson. The controversial casino figure, who has been linked to efforts to keep online gaming and sports gambling out of the U.S., said during a recent earnings call, “We are interested in M&A [mergers and acquisitions] … I’m not going to give up on developing Integrated Resorts. I’m going to add on to our strategic thinking, strategic priorities that we can acquire because most of the other companies don’t have the balance sheet that we do, and they don’t have the potential market that we do … so I’m now taking on the strategy of both acquiring and building and developing.”

DeCree used these comments as the basis for his analysis, singling out the three aforementioned targets due to their proximity “to the Asian consumer, and particularly the Chinese consumer,” a requirement of LVS and its M&A strategy. It doesn’t hurt that Crown is currently in bad shape with regulators in Australia and that Wynn’s Asian subsidiary, Wynn Macau, is coming off a quarter that saw it report losses of $154 million. Wynn also has a lot of assets in Macau, which leads DeCree to conclude that an acquisition of the company “makes the most strategic sense for LVS. It would add US$1.6 billion of in place EBITDA immediately (normalized for COVID-19), plus cost synergies. It would give LVS 2,700 additional rooms in Macau and a significant increase in exposure to the higher-end premium mass and VIP segments.”

Okada Manila makes for a decent target because of the growing local market that is following a pattern seen previously by Macau. The Union Gaming analyst explains, “While the Philippines gaming market doesn’t rival Las Vegas or Macau in terms of regulatory maturity and transparency, we think the region possesses many of the same supply-driven attributes that made Macau an attractive investment opportunity 15 years ago. As such, we think the high-quality gaming assets in Manila could be given some serious consideration … Okada Manila tops our list of potential M&A targets in Manila. Now that construction on the final hotel tower of phase I at Okada Manila is nearly complete, the property is ready to reach its potential on the other side of the pandemic.” Okada Manila has also been the recipient of positive comments by Decree pertaining to its revenue capabilities.

Possibly taking a cue from Sheldon Adelson’s playbook, retail casino operators in Argentina just delivered a huge blow to the nascent online gaming segment. The City of Buenos Aires was ready to start issuing online gaming licenses after legislators approved the activity last year, but the retail operators have stepped in, convincing a judge to suspend the process temporarily, according to local media outlet Clarín. They argue that the city doesn’t have the authority to approve online gaming and, as such, cannot approve gaming licenses.

The truth is more than likely a different story. Retail gaming operators everywhere have shown a propensity to go out of their way to stop gaming from expanding into the online realm, even though they always lose in the end. In the case of Buenos Aires, the city had approved online gaming last year as a means to boost its revenue through tax collecting and to be able to compete against foreign operators who were stealing Argentinian gamblers.

When Buenos Aires passed its gaming legislation, it put the Buenos Aires City Lottery (LOTBA, for its Spanish acronym) in charge of receiving applications and issuing licenses. It also stipulated that companies who have a license for land-based operations could not move into the online space. As a result, riverboat casinos and the Argentine Hippodrome of Palermo were left out.

Later, the coronavirus hit and Argentina, like many other countries, put everything on lockdown, including casinos and gambling facilities. As a result, the hippodrome and the riverboat casinos were forced to shut down due to a lack of revenue. Like jilted lovers, they sought revenge and went to court to force the LOTBA to stop the application process. A judge initially tossed out their request, but it went on to a federal court on appeal, which has now sided with the operators.

Online gambling operators may have been given the green light to resume operations in the Philippines, but they won’t be doing it without heavy scrutiny. Interior Secretary Eduardo Año announced the sectorwill be under supervision of special team from the Philippine National Police (PNP), while Congressman Bienvenido Abante Jr is still fighting to ban the industry entirely.

The Philippine Offshore Gambling Operators will have to strictly adhere to the still in place Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ), which limits travel and mass gatherings of people. “There are certain requirements imposed by the BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue) and DOF (Department of Finance) for them to comply and if they do not comply then we will not allow them (POGOs) to operate,” Año said, responding to questions about how the government will keep POGOs compliant.

“We also formed a special team in the law enforcement to check on these areas, venues for their operations to make sure they are following quarantine rules. If they violate them, we padlock and stop their operations,” he added.

On May 1, the Philippines Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) gave permission or licensed POGOs to resume operations, so long as they followed strict guidelines that would limit the number of employees in an office, and provide safety measures to keep everyone from catching COVID-19. This has caused a flurry of debate over whether POGOs should even exist at all, nevermind resume operations during a pandemic.