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What Will the Future of Live Casinos in the USA Look Like After COVID-19?

Certain Measures In Force In Order To Comply With Social Distancing Regulations

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The concept of live casinos has been around for quite a while, and many casino goers immediately liked the idea of having a land-based casino experience on their device. Although live dealer games were popular before the coronavirus pandemic, their popularity absolutely skyrocketed with many casino lovers being confined to their homes.

However, the land-based casinos are thinking about reopening their doors with certain measures in force in order to comply with social distancing regulations. Let’s see what these measures are and how they would affect live casinos in general.

Casinos in Nevada Will Reopen, but Must Follow Guidelines

According to CasinoUSA.com which offers list of live dealer online casinos for players from USA such as live Blackjack and live dealer roulette casinos that governor of Nevada Steve Sisolak ordered all casinos and other venues to close their doors to visitors in mid-March. The final deadline for reopening was extended, causing land-based casinos in the state to lose millions of dollars in revenue.

It’s no wonder why venues are now looking forward to reopening for visitors once again. They would not be able to operate, however, unless they follow the guideline proposed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Essentially, all casinos that want to work will have to follow several rules. For example, games such as blackjack, baccarat, roulette, craps, and poker will only allow a limited number of players at the same table.

Moreover, workers will have to disinfect all critical surfaces regularly. These are the surfaces that many people come in contact with when playing casino games. On top of that, only a limited number of guests would be allowed, and no big groups of people should be let into casinos at once.

Basically, the rules come down to this — clean as often as possible and make sure that social distancing takes place.

Nightclubs and restaurants will not work until further notice.

With all this in mind, can casinos in Nevada (or anywhere else in the world where they open their doors to visitors) expect casino goers to come flocking in?

People Will Still Fear Going to Casinos

The philosophy of casino operators who operate land-based venues is rather simple — it’s better to have at least some revenue than to have none. Although they probably expect that visitors would not take long to decide to go to their favorite casino, the reality seems a little bit different.

The truth is that the lockdown has taken a toll on people, and fear isn’t going to go away for some time. This could actually affect land-based casinos for months, if not years to come.

Once casinos reopen, they would have to reduce the number of patrons who can be at the casino at the same time. However, even when the maximum number is allowed, casinos would have trouble reaching the numbers that they had before the coronavirus.

People would gradually have more courage to go out and visit casinos, so the number of visitors will increase in time. Yet, there’s no exact estimate of how long that period would be before it returns to the pre-corona state.

Live Casinos Will Become More Popular

Live casinos had been popular even before the coronavirus pandemic took place. Ever since the concept was invented, the popularity has been increasing. Therefore, it’s only natural to assume that people would continue to be more interested in this type of entertainment than before, regardless of the pandemic.

Sure, the popularity increase might not be as high as the past couple of months, but there’s definitely going to be one in the future. The real reason live casinos are so popular is not actually related to coronavirus in any way.

We simply have to accept the idea that a concept such as a live casino is something that really has the power to disrupt the industry as we know it.

Online casinos offered us virtual games that are replicas of games that we found in land-based casinos. How live casinos offer much more than that — they offer the land-based experience on the web, just a couple of clicks away.

In other words, instead of dressing up and traveling to the nearest land-based casino to play a couple of hands of blackjack, you can have exactly the same thing on your PC or mobile.
It’s the Social Factor That Counts
The real question here is — why are live casinos getting popular in the first place? The real answer is not in technology or games. In fact, we have to deal with human psychology here.

Namely, when we play games such as blackjack or roulette, we often don’t play them for the sake of playing. As a matter of fact, we don’t even play them for the sake of winning money. Instead, we play them for the sake of socializing.

Hanging out with other people plays a huge part in casino games. What many casinos on the web didn’t have in the past was the human touch. This caused many players to quickly get bored with some table and card games where their only opponent was the algorithm.

At one point, someone understood this flaw and came up with the concept of a live casino.

They decided to live stream live dealers directly from a casino or from a special studio and add the “social” part to online casino games. Nowadays, live dealer games are part of almost every casino on the web, and they offer a whole new level of entertainment, especially because they offer a perfect mixture of land-based and online casinos.

Final Thoughts: Are Land-Based Casinos a Thing of the Past?

It’s difficult to make any kind of prediction regarding online and land-based casino industries. Big casino cities such as Las Vegas and Macau are going to be gambling centers for many years to come, despite experiencing some obstacles on the way.

It’s also true that the popularity of online casinos, especially live casino sections, could directly influence the number of people who visit land-based casinos. Yet, it is always uncertain to predict whether such a thing would happen at some point.