How Casino Brands are Pivoting to Digital in the Post-Covid Era

The Covid-19 pandemic has had far reaching consequences on the world. Not only has it had a profound impact on the lives of people who lost loved ones, but it has left a lasting mark on society as a whole.

The way we speak and interact with one another has changed. Political discourse and trust in systems and authority has been shaken and weakened. On a positive note though, many of us have been left with a lasting gratitude and appreciation of aspects of our lives that pre-2020, we may have taken for granted.

For in the chaos, pain and suffering of a seismic event such as a global pandemic there are lessons to be learned and positives to be taken. In the business world, there were industries that successfully pivoted to lockdowns and came out of the pandemic stronger and more resilient.

One such industry is casino gambling. In this article we take a closer look at how that industry in general, used the lockdown brought on by Covid-19 to rejuvenate its economic offering.

The Digital Casino Revolution

Gambling and the internet have a long partnership. In the 1990s, when the World Wide Web was barely recognisable to what it is today, poker was one of the first games to be played remotely. Then in the mid-2000s, countries like the United Kingdom became the pioneers of a fully legalised and regulated online gambling industry.

In the years and months leading up to Covid-19, online casino gambling in the UK had never looked stronger. One Google search for the ‘top casino sites in the UK’ would have brought up millions of results.

Other parts of the world however, were not as open and welcoming to online gambling as the British government had been. Canada, the United States of America and many other western countries approached 2020 with the same attitudes as British lawmakers did in the 1990s. The pandemic forced many to change their attitudes.

The Pre-Covid Landscape in Canada and the US

Whilst movement had been made in the United States with the striking down of PASPA on a federal level, the general consensus amongst lawmakers in the country was that online gambling was bad. That was a sentiment that was shared in Canada, even if the final execution of that thinking was slightly different – Canada offered state operated online gambling.

In both countries this led to gaming fans spending their time wagering online, illegally, with companies registered overseas. Whilst lawmakers in both countries resented seeing tax dollars leave the country in this way, they broadly accepted it as better than the alternative.

In the USA the alternative was a decimation of the land-based casino sector. This fear percolated in Washington rather successfully, thanks to a number of high-profile casino moguls such as Sheldon Adelson contributing significantly to political campaign funds.

In Canada, the alternative was seen as a landscape where addiction reigned supreme and the social ills of gambling would spiral out of control.

What Covid-19 Changed

When governments around the world locked down their citizens, everything was either closed, postponed or moved online. In the USA – the home of capitalism – once thriving casinos like Caesars Palace were forced to close their doors and watch their profits come to a complete stop.

This led Caesars, along with a number of other high profile names, to get really involved in the online casino gambling world. Due to the unique circumstances and the political weight of these giant land-based casino companies, legislators around the US began to adopt online gambling legislation at a far quicker rate than previously envisaged.

North of the border in Canada, legislators continued to bury their heads in the sand. That was until, public pressure and perhaps the black hole of tax revenues forced the government to make a U-turn. In the first few months of 2026, Canadian legislators are set to reveal a slew of new laws and regulatory frameworks that will bring the country’s online gambling sector into the 21^st century.

The Kick is Money

In 2005 it was clear that a number of industries were beginning to move online, including gambling. Ten years later it was obvious that the future of gambling lay largely online and that the best way to deal with it was to introduce robust regulation.

Why then, did it take those two bastions of North America a global pandemic to fully realise the potential of the online gambling sector? Money. Until that point, in the USA, the money had lay firmly with the land-based sector and they did not want online expansion.

In Canada, the loss of tax dollars wasn’t as acutely felt until the state was forced to adopt sweeping socialist policies to keep businesses afloat during a pandemic.

So, when Covid forced land-based casinos online in pursuit of money in the USA, and left Canadian economists looking behind the sofa for loose change, attitudes to online gambling soon changed. As Adventures of Stevie V sang in 1989, Money Talks…

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