How the coronavirus infection affected players at Russian bookmakers

The situation with coronavirus in 2020 could not leave a single person indifferent. The first wave of the crisis has probably ended. But no one can predict exactly what awaits us in the future. And this causes a tense situation. On the other hand, the price of the ability to correctly analyze actions and assess probabilities in critical situations is becoming higher than ever. A

To better understand how our players feel and what has changed for them, Bethub analysts conducted a small and quite understandable (later, see more details below, even a little simplified) survey. The goal was to understand how players generally feel, what their financial situation is and how they place bets.

The first question was quite simple and not directly related to bookmakers. It can probably be found on many questionnaires now. “How has your income changed during the pandemic?”

The players responded like this:

Oddly enough, this is quite optimistic. It turns out that 58% of Bethub users either began to receive at least not much less, or even more money. And 12% even managed to make the pandemic benefit them. But the remaining 42% began to live much worse, and 16% eventually lost their jobs altogether. That’s 60% more. than the statistics for the country recently provided by the Higher School of Economics Research Institute.

The second question was something more related to Bethub in particular: “How has your spending on sports betting changed during the pandemic?” Results:

About a fifth of players decided not to place bets at all during the pandemic, and about the same number continued to place bets as usual. The reduction in betting costs is quite consistent with the reduction in revenue in the previous question. But now more than 27% of people began to bet, and only 12%’s income increased.

Accordingly, not everyone who began to bet more was able to win on these bets. Indeed, the pandemic led to unpleasant, unexpected costs; many people lost their nerve and decided to take the maximum risk. The very prospect of reducing the bank to less than the original value, then trying to regain what was lost, turned out to be frightening. As a result, out of fear, which, as you know, has big eyes, they began to analyze bets poorly and, accordingly, lose the remaining money. Unfortunately, trying to desperately solve financial problems through gambling should most likely be considered a mistake.

The next question was intended to help understand what players bet on and was: “How have your gambling preferences changed during the pandemic?” Answers:

More than half of the players did not change their preferences in this sense. 30% of those who switched to eSports is also quite logical and reasonable, because eSports greatly increased its importance at the beginning of the pandemic, and in general its popularity is only growing every year among both spectators and players. Both in bookmakers and for analytical reviews. In the next 10-15 years, we can expect that the majority of major world tournaments will be tied to e-sports in one way or another.

But the fact that even if only 10% of players still chose the casino is not encouraging. Such a desperate option will only lead to financial difficulties and in the shortest possible time will develop an unpleasant psychological dependence.

“Have you used credit funds for gambling during the pandemic, although you have never used them before?” - one of the most important questions that interests us. It is quite obvious, because the use of borrowed funds is one of the main indicators that a person is addicted to gambling and gambling has an extremely bad effect on him (at least it is negative).

But still, even this indicator looks overestimated - too many people who had not previously taken out loans supposedly began to take them only during the crisis (and who gave them them in this case). Probably, the original question is too difficult to understand and not everyone understood it correctly. It was decided to divide the question into two elementary ones:

“Did you use leveraged betting before the pandemic?”

“Have you used leveraged bets during the pandemic?”

So we were not mistaken: not all players answered the original question correctly. In fact, the number of players who began to use credit funds during the pandemic, but had not done so before, increased by 15%.

The specific conclusions of the study are as follows. During a pandemic or a worsening financial situation, approximately every fifth player among users commits actions that are detrimental to him, in particular, for example:

• invests too much money when it is not really needed;
• plays with too much risk;
• analyzes rates poorly or completely neglects such analysis;
• choosing a game in a casino - this is generally very bad;
• tries to take out loans and place bets on them;
• basically makes gambling an attempt to solve his financial problems.

It is important to remember that if problems are not resolved as soon as possible, they will spread to your loved ones. This is the worst thing in times of crisis. Monitor the situation carefully and if the game begins to affect your life for the worse, it may be better to stop now.