Goodbye Mr Bond – The increasing erosion of land-based casinos

Is it a concern for us online casino lovers that land-based casinos will survive? In that case, we probably have to think about how we can contribute to their survival.

In my own home country, Sweden, it is the state that has a monopoly on land-based casinos. Although nowadays it can be written in the singular, i.e. monopoly on the only existing land-based casino. A single legal casino remains in Sweden at a central address in Stockholm. And it has generated loss after loss over a large number of years for Swedish taxpayers to deal with.

Someone might say that it takes a government as an owner to run a casino at a loss, and there is probably some truth in such a statement. Governments are rarely good at running businesses, which is fine because they shouldn't run businesses.

At the same time, it is unreasonable not to see the transformation that casino gambling worldwideis undergoing, from offline to online. Which in my own country will soon have a ratio of 0/100. In a year or so, the government is expected to close the last land-based casino in Sweden.

Does it matter? I think so. Casinos have sprung from physical premises, often in a glamorous guise. My favourite part of any James Bond movie is when he gambles at a casino. To be in a physical casino has been to be in an enclosed world, with its own particular social codes. I've always loved spending an evening in a real casino, and I realize that I'm also part of their downfall; it's been forever since I was there.

"Real casino" I wrote in the text above, which says more about me and my age than about reality. Those of us who are 50+ have tended to divide the world into the real physical world, in contrast to the online world, as being less real. It is, of course, an absurd division. For most of the people around me, most of whom are naturally younger, online existence is at least as real. And soon the physical reality, at least when it comes to land-based casinos in Sweden, doesn't even exist.

In several European jurisdictions, a gambling company must first have a land-based casino license in order to obtain an online casino license. As if Spotify had to start physical record stores that sell CDs in order to be able to offer music online. The politicians who have pushed through these regulations are not worthy of the citizens' trust in upcoming elections.

The future will tell whether land-based casinos have a role to play in Europe in the future. I hope so. However, one thing is certain: they will not survive because politicians do tricks and fixes to give them advantages over online casinos.

Instead, talented entrepreneurs are required to be attracted to the land-based casino, to reshape it and give it renewed relevance in today's and tomorrow's Europe. And lastly that the regulatory compliance for running a land-based casino does not become so complicated and burdensome that the possibility of running a profitable business is stopped at the entrance to the casino.

Image credit: Casino Guru News