After over 3 months of being shut down because of the Coronavirus pandemic, Illinois Casinos are Reopening Next Week. According to the latest betting odds news, the announcement was made yesterday by administration of Governor J.B. Pritzker.
Therefore, next Wednesday 10 casinos and thousands electronic gambling machine operators will be back in business. While Illinois is a bit behind other states in reopening their casinos, it comes at a great moment for them. This is because they finally entering Phase 4 of their reopening plan and will bring back jobs that were lost.
Illinois Casinos are Reopening and Bringing Back Revenue
While online casinos have brought in some revenue for the state of Illinois, it did not help casino workers. Furthermore, over 5,000 casinos employee were without a job in Illinois because of the coronavirus. Therefore, several of these employees will not be able to go to work next week.
In addition, Illinois is in dire need of money for their budget. This is because they have lost a lot of their revenue that came from gambling. Furthermore, the shutdown also had a toll on jobs and market that rely on the gambling industry. For example, several people work in the food, transportation and hospitality industry which rely on casinos.
In addition, since March, 36,000 video gambling machines have been out of operation. While Online Slot machines are available, this is still a loss of revenue for thousands of operators. In fact, these gambling machines make up the tope gaming revenue for the state after the lottery.
Before the shutdown, Illinois casinos made over $470 million from March 2019 through June 2019. Therefore, Illinois made $114 million in revenue during that time last year. This is in addition to $587 million from video gambling machines.
Gambling industry analyst believe that despite reopening casinos, it will take a long time for gambling revenues to come back. This is because safety measures are still in place and it will take a while for gamblers to return.
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