The global pandemic has affected every field and every sector of our daily lives. Many businesses are left without any further hope. While the rest of the businesses continue to sink, the online gambling industry and especially the slots continue to rise in popularity.
Gambling and gaming giant Aristocrat Leisure experienced the 20% increase in player purchases for online activities. The increase was observed in the previous three months period. This was the result of lockdowns and people who were forced to stay home in isolation.
As mentioned before the gambling industry experienced a great increase and has benefited from the situation a lot. With the fees and charges being trimmed as gambling facilities all over the world have been shut due to pandemic, the sales of physical gambling machines have battered. The Aristocrat company’s statutory profit for the past six months has jumped from $346 to $1.3 billion.
On the other hand, the normalized profit, which is calculated after tax and amortization, has decreased significantly. The earnings went down to $368 million from $422 million. And if we take a close look, this was after the revenue raised for 7% to $2.25 million, and digital revenue grew by 20%.
Expectations VS Reality
While the pandemic has affected every sector and many people indeed, we were still hoping that outcomes of the COVID-19 would be less harsh.
The fall of earnings, in reality, was way worse than expected and Citigroup analyst Bryan Raymond made the statement regarding the factors that contributed to the extremely low earnings. According to his assessment, the factors include weak machine sales in the US, poor Australian earning, and higher levels of doubtful debts.