GAMING NEWS
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iGaming Fails To Help Holland Casino
H
olland Casino has announced a significant annual fall-off in performance for the year of 2021. Compared 2020, a year which enjoyed two completely COVID free months in January and February, revenues dropped nearly nine percentage points.
countable for €152.4m of the overall €304.2m generated in gross gaming revenue last year, tracked at -18% on the previous year. Table game enterprises fared even worse, delivering just over €94.1m, over a quarter down on 2020 revenue.
However, given the draconian limitations on bricks-and-mortar play, declining returns are perhaps an understandable output of a COVIDravaged year. In 2021, casino venues were closed for almost half of the full calendar year, and, even when they were open, they were still subjected to considerable curbs and restrictions. Attendance caps, social distancing and mask-wearing all conspired to undermine the ambience of the casino floor.
However, there were some green shoots in the performance landscape. Holland Casinos new iGaming platform, despite not having enough momentum to eat up the 9% bandwidth between 2021 and 2020 returns, still recorded impressive numbers. Netherlands’ nascent online gaming industry launched in autumn last year, with ten licenses granted to local concessionaires. Holland Casino’s successful gaming application contributed a fifth of total marketplace revenue.
The slot vertical, which was ac-
The firm also used a quieter 2021 to
re-align its costs efforts, and managed to tighten its belt quite substantially. Total operating losses came to €60.9m, a staggering 22.5% improvement on 2020. In his summary of the results, Chief Financial Officer, Ruud Bergervoet, championed this profitability work, and also thanked the government for their input during the chaos of the last 24 months. ‘’Despite the negative figures, we are in good financial shape at the core. This is partly thanks to the agility of Holland Casino and to the government support, which enable us to retain a large proportion of the jobs in our company’’ said Bergervoet adding, ‘’we also looked at how we could manage the organisation as a whole more efficiently and effectively’’.
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