Casino Industry “May Never Recover” as Doors Remain Closed in August

Already teetering on a knife edge, the casino industry in the UK has been advised by the government that reopening on 1 August as planned would be too high risk.  

This comes after casinos brought staff out of furlough and invested in security and training at great expense, and The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has had enough. 

 Cry for Help 

A letter sent to Chancellor Rishi Sunak MP on 31 July by The Betting and Gaming Council stated:  

“Keeping casinos closed is highly illogical, inconsistent and deeply damaging to those businesses and the thousands of staff they employ.” 

The industry standards body confirms that reopening casinos who have done everything possible to maintain pandemic best practices are no more, or less, dangerous than other businesses. While the expense to get to this point has been great, their concern is for additional job losses and possible business closures for an already wrecked market. 

Commenting on the direction by the UK government, BGC Chief Executive, Michael Dugher said: 

“Casinos are a small but fundamental part of our leisure, hospitality, entertainment and tourism industry. They employ over 14,000 people across the UK and indirectly support another 4,000 jobs in the supply sector, and last year casinos paid over £5.7 million in tax per week.” 

As it stands, the UK Treasury is already forking out aid to the tune of around £10,000,000 per week in furlough payments and lost tax receipts. Now, as aid is being phased out while citizens continue to sit without income, and businesses close because they simply can’t stay afloat, it seems like an impossible scenario. 

 A lose-lose situation 

Before the pandemic, casinos paid over £300,000,000 in taxes each year and accounted for 14,000 jobs.  

Genting Casino, for example, employed over 4,000 people in the UK and are having to make heart-breaking decisions about their business due to this lengthy forced closure, as job losses seem unavoidable. 

Frustration is at an all-time high as casinos have jumped through all the required hoops and received approval from the public health system in preparation for reopening in August. Dugher continued: 

“We made the all necessary preparations for safe reopening and we were given the green light by Public Health England on the basis of the significant investment made by operators, and having been told by the Government themselves that casinos posed a ‘negligible’ risk compared with the tens of thousands of other places that they have been reopened.” 

These requirements came at a heavy cost as casinos installed screens, sanitation devices and state of the art track and trace systems to comply with international best practices.  

Given the lengths casinos have gone to in order to remain operational, the success or failure of the casino industry and the possible loss of around 6,000 jobs in the UK now lies at the feet of the government.