It’s been just over a year, almost to the month, and the current global situation remains, in my view, quite surreal, says DRGT CEO Jurgen de Munck. Just over 12 months ago, most of the gambling world was in the UK attending the planet’s biggest gaming exhibition, ICE London. At that event many of us were speculating to what extent what was happening in China and how it was going to impact the rest of the world, and within a month we all found out.
Notwithstanding the health-related consequences, the effect this pandemic has had on the global economy, and specifically our entertainment sector, is almost unquantifiable, so I am not even going to try.
What I can do though is reflect on our company, and the fact that we were, and we remain, in the fortunate position of being almost debt-free, and as such able to, as best possible, ‘weather the storm’. Notwithstanding this I firmly believe that (as per Benjamin Franklin) “Out of adversity comes opportunity”. Now whilst in the short-term this thought may be difficult to digest, I really believe that in time it will ring true.
I referenced ‘in time’ specifically, as it is time that allows us, and teaches us, to adapt, and once we have, we prosper again; in relation to DRGT that ‘opportunity’ has been the fuelling of the cashless gaming debate, a technology solution we have advocated since inception; and one that forms the very backbone of our existence. Operators have always seen the value therein, both for themselves and their players, with the barrier at times being financial, and at other times operational or regulatory. What the pandemic has taught everyone is that change can be affected, across all spheres of life whether they be at home and at work, a lot quicker than we all thought, and if an expedited move to cashless, in the gaming sector, is the change – then bring it on!
