The last few years have been tough for many businesses. Entire sectors have seen their turnover suddenly drop to zero. However, it is not only the pandemic that has affected businesses. There are also some businesses that are highly exposed to the regulations of the different countries where they have a presence and an example of this is sports betting and online gambling in general.
For example, in the United States online gambling is banned in almost every state in the country. This is not really a big problem because it has been unchanged for many years, with the only positive changes for gambling companies, as some of the states have decided to allow certain types of online gambling.
However, these changes do pose a problem in some countries that have regulated gambling and tighten the rules for bookmakers or do not have it regulated and want to regulate it to prohibit or limit it in some way.
Some of the most typical cases are Japan, which has hardly any regulations in this regard. As we can see in the information provided by specialized sports betting sites such as スポーツベット24.com, online betting sites allow online betting to Japanese citizens, but Japanese companies are not allowed to offer online gambling services. Therefore, it is a market where players have to go to international bookmakers in order to bet on their favorite teams.
Other different cases are Spain and Italy, which are moving in the direction of banning the advertising of online bookmakers. In Spain, in fact, they have already banned many practices such as the offer of welcome bonuses for new players and sports sponsorships. Italy has not yet regulated all this, but it seems that the intention is to follow in the footsteps of its neighboring country.
But when both problems come together for bookmakers, as has happened with the pandemic and the rules that many countries put in place precisely because of it (there were countries that banned advertising for the duration of home confinements), the economic consequences for these companies are enormous. For all these reasons, bookmakers are confident that the World Cup in Qatar will attract enough players to recover part of the income lost in recent years, when they were the big losers in the sector. While companies offering other products, such as online casinos, saw their player volume grow with the pandemic, bookmakers suffered among other things from the fact that practically all professional sports competitions around the world suddenly stopped, eliminating any possibility for players to place sports bets on these events.
Another factor that does not help either is the severe economic crisis we are suffering as a result of the war in Ukraine and the huge inflation that practically all countries in the world are suffering in their economies, as many bookmakers’ users cannot afford to bet on their favorite teams due to the rising cost of living.
Undoubtedly, the World Cup is the great hope of bookmakers not to further aggravate the economic situation they are experiencing.