How Covid-19 affects gambling industry: Experts’ opinion (update)

RichAds Team
Jun 30, 2020
7 min

Experts share their opinions on how Covid-19 influenced the gambling vertical.

The situation in the world affiliate marketing industry is constantly changing following the announcement of the world pandemic. Offline casinos all over the world are quarantined and players go to online space. Gambling is a vertical that not only stays afloat but even makes profit during these difficult times. How to make money on gambling during Covid-19? Read in our new article.

What is gambling?
Gambling is a vertical in affiliate marketing that includes online casinos & betting. Affiliate marketers all over the world like this niche since the demand for such offers is quite high. The vertical offers a few payment models, high payouts and opportunity to work with different traffic types.

Watch the Webinar “Push and Pops Trends in iGaming 2022”

Gambling & Covid-19

Coronavirus pandemic made everybody stay at home and find new ways of entertainment. Online casinos, games, streams, cybersport – all this helps not to feel bored during the quarantine. A lot of people started gambling to kill time that’s why the average traffic volumes are increasing. Particular success online casinos have in those GEOs where offline casinos were quarantined, for example, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Experts’ opinions

3snet, Alex Miller, expert

“In this situation, online gambling feels better than any other vertical (for example, betting). Now we can dwell on a few factors that influence the situation with gambling. The first one is self-isolation and quarantine. People have to give up their usual lifestyle and spend a lot of time at home. Much time in their hands and boredom. In this situation, people start to look for new pleasures.

Online options that don’t require much money and special skills but give a necessary shot of adrenaline are appropriate. Online casinos with nice bonus systems and stable work are perfect variants. Thus, casinos will get lots of new gamblers. Also, it should be said that the demand for online poker has also increased significantly.”

Gambling offers from 3snet:

id 2184 7Spins CPL ZA – $40
id 1445 Vulkan Vegas CPA 16 countries –$ 55-110.
id 2027 7Bitcasino CPA 3 countries – € 110.
id 1843 King Billy CPA 10 countries – € 150.
id 1773 Rizk Casino CPA 3 countries – € 45-100.

affLIFT, Luke Kling, Owner

“Based on what people on affLIFT are saying, I would say yes though. Gambling is very popular now”.

MyLead, Bartosz Magielski, Marketing & Affiliate Manager

“According to the latest results of gambling companies, all those who offer their services online have recorded increases. So it’s clear that Internet users, being forced to spend time at home, are looking for ways to entertain themselves. Gambling is one of the possible ways. The fact that traditional casinos in many countries are closed is also an important reason – online gambling is, therefore, the only way”.

Gambling offers from MyLead:

AffGun, Alexander Khil, CEO & Owner

“During pandemic, gambling is actively increasing but betting is decreasing opposite. The growth has been marked in the countries where offline casinos were quarantined, for example, the Czech Republic. In СIS countries the average check goes down“.

Gambling offers from AffGun:

Welcome Partners, Vladislav Arbuzov, PR-manager

“Due to the canceling of all the sports events casino is increasing both in average deposit and conversion rate. Cybersport is also becoming more and more popular”.

Сpagetti, Nikita Bulakhov, marketing specialist

“Gambling vertical is much in demand now: people stay at home and spend more time online. Our advertisers highlight the fact that gambling is growing significantly during the coronavirus pandemics. Delivery services are closed in many countries but gambling stays away from this problem. That’s why now is the best time to start working with online casino”.

RedTrack, Dasha Nazarova, Partnership & Marketing manager

“I would say that gambling experiences both the rise and fall of traffic today. On the one hand, the online casino has always been one of the most profitable gambling niches. During a pandemic, the traffic volumes are incredible here, as everyone spends more time at home in front of a computer. New GEOs arise, for example, last week the first online casino was legalized in my homeland, in Belarus”.

Adcombo, Senior Business Development Manager

“Now gambling depends on two factors. The first one is definitely quarantine. We can see a significant increase in gambling ads.

However, betting is almost stopped as there are no sports events now except cybersport. The second factor is the exchange rate.

The exchange rates in oil-producing countries are unstable, as a consequence, a lot of offers stop performing due to the decrease in their dollar price but the traffic price remains the same. You should take it into account and stock up on good offers in advance”.

Gambling offers from Adcombo:

TopOffers, Nilu Yusupova, Business Development Manager

“During the period of self-isolation, people have more time on their hands. As a result, screen time increases dramatically. While online gambling might serve as a fleeting distraction from the current situation, quarantine creates perfect conditions for the online gambling industry to remain profitable.

Today, gamblers have more time to enjoy all the thrills and spills of their favorite casino games, poker rooms, or slots. Like gaming and streaming services, online gambling offers not only enjoyable leisure-time activities. It keeps attracting more gamblers because of the excitement, which helps to reduce stress and anxiety people are especially inclined to these days. Since online gambling is not as strictly regulated as machine betting shops or regular casinos, it offers certain freedoms to gamblers. Therefore, when gambling online, they do not have to consider all the typical restrictions like spend or stake limits.

When it comes to online gambling, quarantine seems to be a minor setback for a major comeback. So far, the online gambling industry has not suffered a downturn in performance, and it is not likely to any time soon”.

Gambling offers from TopOffers:

id 3021 Mr.Bet FTD AT – $150
id 3019 Mr.Bet FTD CA – $200
id 3022 Mr.Bet FTD DE – $150
id 3020 Mr.Bet FTD NO – $200
id 3018 Mr.Bet FTD NZ – $150
id 2887 LeoVegas DOI FI/DE/NO/CA – $9
id 2914 Casumo DOI FI/NO/CA – $9

C3PA, Illia Slavnyi, Client Service Team Lead

There were a few changes in a gambling vertical during the coronavirus crisis. First of all, some advertisers have started to cut the budgets, decrease the current CPA, as PV has dropped due to the crisis.

But even with these changes, we see that our volumes in gambling have grown as people are spending money ONLY on the Internet and all players don’t have an opportunity to visit offline casinos. We see great results mostly in these GEOs: AU, RU, NZ, NO, CA.

Gambling offers from C3PA:

1163 Casino-X CPA RU [fb/vk cloak traffic only] /PO: up to $90
5298 Golden Reels CPA AU, NZ/ PO: up to $180
5480 Wild Jackpots Casino CPA NO/ up to 160 EURO
4656 GoWild Casino CPA CA/ PO up to 140 EURO

World situation with casino

A lot of offline casinos all over the world suffer losses as they have to close their doors due to pandemic. That’s why lots of people go to online space to entertain and earn money. We’ve prepared for you a table with the current situation with offline casinos in countries where they are legalized. Also, in the last two columns you can see average CPC and traffic volumes for these GEOs in RichAds ad network.

Country	Offline Casino Status	Covid-19 influence	Push Avg CPC, $	Push Traffic Volume, Mln
Germany	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0315	59
France	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0250	46
Italy	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0170	35
Great Britain	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0301	31
Spain	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0133	23
Czech Republic	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0229	3.6
Latvia	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0252	1.2
Malta	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0134	0.54
Estonia	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0112	0.32
Monaco	✅ legalized ✅	❌ quarantined ❌	0.0284	0.01

Examples of gambling offers

How to choose the payment model?

There are 3 most popular payment models in gambling offers:

CPL (Cost Per Lead) – you pay for registration.

This model is appropriate for newbies but it’s quite rare for affiliate marketing. Moreover, CPL-model has quite strict KPI (registration may be complicated and multi-stage). Here lead is any information left by the user on the offer page, for example, email, phone number, postal address or name.

CPA (Cost per Action) – you pay for the action, for example, making a deposit.

In this model, you get the percentage of the gambler’s deposit. The model is most common in working with gambling vertical and allows filtering low-quality traffic. Media buyer assumes all the risks and offer’s owner pays only for the real action (not clicks or impressions). CPA is not appropriate for newbies as the conversion level here is low.

Revshare (Revenue Share) – the percentage of the casino’s profit.

Usually, this model is used only by experienced affiliate marketers. They work directly with the advertiser, not via affiliate program. Casino shares a percentage of its profit but you will have to prove the quality of your traffic. It should be high-quality and usually, such traffic is organic, for example, SEO.

But working with this payment model you should be prepared for the loss. If the gambler beats casino and it bears losses then your profit will decrease.

Do you wanna see a practical case study? Here we are with the case study and master-class “How to advertise online gambling with push ads”.

Of course, don’t forget about the traffic type! Push and pop traffic works great with gambling offers. Find high-quality traffic at RichAds. Don’t panic and stay safe.

What is RichAds?
🔝 Push and pop ads,
🔼 CPC starts from $ 0.003,
🔝 CPM from $0,3 in Tier 3, $0,5 in Tier 2, $1 in Tier 1,
⏫ large volumes of available traffic in more than 200 geos.