Online gambling sites begin taking bets on how the coronavirus will spread as professional sports leagues shut down and leave them struggling to make up lost revenue
- Some online gambling sites have begun taking prop bets on COVID-19’s spread
- Sites in Russia will take bets on city shutdowns, toilet paper shortages and more
- The estimated loss in revenue from sports league closure could be $43.5billion
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As most major professional sporting organizations have shut down or suspended their seasons because of the COVID-19 pandemic, online gambling companies have scrambled to find new things to bet on.
Some have decided to start taking prop bets on the COVID-19 pandemic itself.
Two Russian online gambling sites, Betcity and PariMatch, have opened new sections dedicated to COVID-19, treating the pandemic as if it were a sports league in its own right.
As major sports events and leagues around the world have closed, online gambling sites have begun taking bets on the spread of COVID-19 to try and make up for the lost revenue
Some of the bets offered are on the likelihood of a vaccine being developed and what date Moscow might be shut down in response to the virus’s spread.
They’re also offering odds on whether there will be shortages of toilet paper or buckwheat, a Russian staple, according to a report in the Moscow Times.
‘There are no matches, so bookmakers had to come up with something,’ gambling beat journalist Pyotr Kondakov sad in an interview. ‘We had to adjust because there’s no getting around this.’
A number of online gambling outlets in the US have had to be equally creative to keep revenue coming in during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to estimates from the American Gaming Association, online betting sites could lose as much as $43.5billion in total revenue from sports shutdowns.
Russian gambling sites are not taking bets on whether Moscow will go into a formal lockdown, whether toilet paper shortages will become widespread, and more
David Strauss of gambling site Mybookie.ag estimates around 95 percent of the company’s revenue came from betting on professional sports.
Without those reliable sources of revenue, they’ve turned to more unusual forms of oddsmaking, including Ukranian Table Tennis, running simulated matches in video games like NBA 2K and Madden NFL, and even what the next day’s weather will be like.
‘We have weather betting,’ Strauss told CNY Central.
‘Weather betting we are just going city by city and place over-under bets on what the weather is going to be that day.’
COVID-19 shutdowns have devastated the entire gambling industry, with widespread casino closures in Las Vegas and waves of layoffs
In-person gambling has been even harder hit by COVD-19 shutdowns than online gambling.
In mid-March many of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas announced they would be temporarily closed to the public, including the MGM Grand, Caesar’s Palace, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, and The Mirage.
The closures have come along with mass layoffs at many properties.
‘I’ve been with the company for (many) years, and like a light switch, I’m out,’ one Caesar’s Palace employee told the Las Vegas Review Journal.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills now. … I need that job and the benefits.’