INSIGHT EUROPEAN CASINO ASSOCIATION
successful coping mechanisms. Tis collaboration accelerated our way of working to deal with the pandemic and highlighted the need for an organisation like the ECA.
One of the additional roles of the ECA is as a voice for the industry at the highest levels. However, for me, lobbying has a negative connotation.
Te ECA is not about lobbying, it is about opening a true and continuous dialogue and getting the facts right. It’s about having constructive and sustainable solutions. I think that is why we need a lobby-strategy, but lobbying in itself is often about money - and this is not a money issue at all. It’s about communicating the fact that we are a serious and very adult industry to the highest levels of government.
Has business been lost to online gaming during the lockdowns that won't return? And in your view - is land-based in opposition to the online sector?
Both online and land-based are elements of the same market, but they exist separately too. I sincerely believe that land-based casinos will always exist. My background is in hospitality, television, live entertainment. Live entertainment is as old as the Greeks. People will always be drawn to live experiences if it’s worth making the effort.
At Holland Casino we have invested heavily into our new venues, which is all about experiences - not just games. Roulette, black jack and slots remain very important, but a land-based experience is also bars, restaurants and entertainment. Everyone needs to understand that the 360 experience is the true difference between land-based and online.
Te pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of gaming and betting worldwide at a speed that no one expected. For an elderly generation, not just a younger demographic, they’ve been taught during Covid to order food, goods, and services online. It has accelerated incredibly fast and intensively and it is never going to be reversed.
From a Dutch perspective, we would have loved to have taken the omni-channel experience as far as possible. However, the law doesn’t allow it. We’ve seen in retail that the integration between land- based and online can successfully merge the two elements. In land-based, however, regulation dictates that we must keep both
separate, which we respect. Te frustrating thing is that in Holland the law did not regulate online until recently, which meant that a lot of companies in the past operated illegally, and this was especially apparent during the pandemic.
Te Dutch market opened on October 1, with only 10 companies receiving licences to date, with Holland Casino being one of them. We started operating on day one, but we were faced with a technical problem that delayed us from the regulator side. We couldn’t test live until the regulator had tested their system, however, it appears that the technical hiccups have been resolved and we now welcome customers to our online offer.
“The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of gaming and betting worldwide at a speed that no one expected. For an elderly
generation, not just a younger demographic, they’ve been taught during Covid to order
food, goods, and services online. It has accelerated incredibly fast and intensively and it is never going to be reversed.”
How does the ECA embrace online?
I think from an ECA perspective, the question online poses is: how do we integrate? We can’t continue to be defensive towards online in the future. A lot of our members (up to 80 per cent I believe) have online and land-based operations. We haven’t found the answer yet, but it is on the table for discussion and top of the agenda for the next board meeting.
Te regulation system in Holland is an incredibly high bar and it’s been a very complicated process to attain our licence. Out of 29 applications, only 10 have secured a licence to date, after six months of investigation by the regulator, which says something about the complexity and high standards set by the Dutch regulator. Today, we only want to work with licensed and approved businesses that have been approved by the regulator.
From a personal level, I’d think this would be a similar high-bar situation for
accepting online members into the ECA. It is complicated, because in some countries licences have yet to be issued. It is a subject that needs to be on the agenda, but I can’t see a quick resolution to the issue.
Until now, the ECA has been very clear cut about its membership: only land-based operators can apply. However, we currently discuss to find a way to broaden the membership to encompass a broader spectrum.
Has Covid destroyed CapEx to the extent that European casinos are now the poor cousins of the global industry?
I think it varies country-by-country and operator-by-operator. Tere is not a general line as to how everyone is doing. What we see is that as casinos reopen, they experience a healthy rebound. We’re definitely not back to the regular levels of 2019, but we are seeing customers return.
It’s difficult to compare and contrast at the European level, because the conditions and actions taken to combat Covid have been different from country-to-country. We do not have EU-wide policy on Covid regulations, and questions about vaccination passports, social distancing, red lists for international travel, mean that an overall picture is difficult to quantify.
What is concrete is that ECA members have a vision for the long-term - and that’s healthy. We also known that many members needed to restructure their companies because of Covid. In Holland, Sweden and Austria, for example, the financial impact of Covid brought about the restructuring of the businesses.
Tens of thousands of people work in the land-based sector and unfortunately the restructuring needed to happen because of Covid. However, this has been achieved in such a way as to not only deal with the short-term crisis, but we have modernised our organisations to be future-proof.
A lot of the ECA members have done this in a strong and smart way, so that they don’t just solve the problems of 2021, but for the next few years to come. As a result, we are aware that we can’t just refrain from investing and wait to see where the landscape takes us. I think that the majority of the shareholders understand this point as well.
How much of a game-changer is the introduction of online gaming legislation in Holland - and how is Holland Casino capitalising on this opportunity?
P28 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
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