This year brought us into uncertain circumstances, with a vague future and inability to change events around us. Experts say that we have already overcome the most terrible time, but we still have a possibility to be affected by the second wave of the coronavirus.
Apparently, unpredictability and anxiety are the most well-known words now, and they define our way of thoughts. That’s why comprehensive and equitable viewpoints about the future are so valuable to all of us now. That’s why we are concentrating on it at Bethub, our betting tips site.
In order to understand the pandemic’s effect on the financial component of our users, and their further expectations from games, we decided to create a social study, and to ask the common questions.
First of all, we created a question that was related to the whole financial strain due to the pandemic. Our clients had to analyze if there were any changes in their income because of the virus.
As a result, only 26% of interviewed replied that their income was the same as before the pandemic.
The same amount (26%) said that their wages dropped very fast and noticeable.
Almost the same quantity of people (20%) observed their income falling slightly, and only 8% observed the opposite – slightly increasing.
4% were happy to see a very fast increase in their income.
And 16% of the interviewed, unfortunately, have lost their jobs.
Thankfully, the majority of our clients (58%) didn’t feel the consequences of the pandemic on their incomes. Even 4% benefited from the situation and started to make more money than before.
16% have completely lost their means of income. Regrettably, this number is 60% higher than HSE Research Institute expected a month ago.
Also, we were interested if our users had modified their betting spending somehow.
And if so, how?
The data suggests the following: 21% decided to stop spending money in betting shops with a view of safe as much money as possible during the pandemic. Apparently, 23% didn’t agree with previous responders, because they continued to play the same sums as beforehand. Seems that 29% found the golden ratio: they kept betting but started to spend slightly less.
Surprisingly, 27% started to spend more during the pandemic.
It is the definition of gambling. The motivation and drive push people to go all-in with the hope to return their bank to its initial value, especially when they are not successful in the game. Imagine the player who all of a sudden has lost half of the bet. For sure, he is anxious and impatient in order to get everything back, and he doesn’t want to spend time recouping slowly and doubtfully. We can see something familiar nowadays. In general, people have lost half of their incomes because of the pandemic crisis, and they hope to re-establish their financial security by going all-in.
Also, we were curious to know if our users had changed their tastes in games because of the pandemic.
What are the results?
As it happened, more than half of the respondents claimed that they didn’t want to change anything in their ways of gambling. 56% decided to continue using our football betting tips and placing wagers, especially on traditional sports events that were available regardless of the pandemic.
ESports got 30% of votes, which is not unexpected because it overwhelmed the betting community when the coronavirus had just started.
In my opinion, eSports is getting more and more popular among players, analysts, and ordinary viewers, so in approximately ten or fifteen years the dominant number of competitions in the world will be in a conjunction with eSports events.
Unfortunately, 11% found an outlet in casinos. Frankly, these are reckless and risky acts that could cause a lot of problems very soon, lead to more financial instability, and an addiction.
It is a fact that if someone starts to borrow money for gambling, we can conclude that this person may have an addiction. According to this marker, we came up with another question. “Did you take money from credit unions during the pandemic, even if you were against it beforehand?”
Results surprised us because respondents answered “yes” in 28% cases. The question wasn’t clear, so we decided to ask it in another way.
We wanted to know if people used loans before and during the pandemic.
In the first case, users replied “yes” in 20% cases, in the second case the percentage increased to 23%.
In conclusion, we want to mark some details of our investigation. In every fifth case, people felt the economical crisis and started to act out of character.
What are they?
- First of all, the number of bets placed increased
- Games became riskier and riskier, more people started to play casino
- Basic and primary rates research is desolated
- Pursuance of credits/loans had been increased
- People are guided by the reliance on solving their economical problems
Most problems can be solved if they are caught early (nipped in the bud). For sure, the coronavirus pandemic had an impact on every inhabitant’s life. That’s why we should be more careful now, wiser. Our research shows that gambling got some problems due to the virus, and we ask you with all our passion to think twice before doing something unadvised, before panic and despair. And everything will come together.
