2020 may have been the most eventful year in recent history and it still has a couple of months left. Wild bushfires in Australia and a presidential election have been dwarfed by the impact of the Covid-19, whether it be on collective human society or on various economies across the world. In this list, we will be taking a look at the industries that have had to adapt to the crazy year of 2020.
Sport
Sport is an industry that was hit very hard by Coronavirus. At the start of the pandemic, when it was spreading along with panic, most events had to be cancelled completely or postponed. The top football leagues had to stop, tennis tournaments were completely annulled except for Roland Garros that was rescheduled and most of rugby was cancelled.
However, sport is an indispensable of countries like the United Kingdom because of how many people watch and how many people genuinely care about competitive sport. An England without the Premier League is not the same, so sport had to adapt.
In some cases, sport moved online and became virtual, like for the Cheltenham Festival. This was still watched by many people and there was a lot of wagering done, but it was not the same as the usual festival. Football, tennis and similar outdoor sports have resumed with social distancing and guidelines to follow because of Corona. This does not impact the actual play, but there are often no fans, or very few.
Betting
One of the effects of Covid-19 has been a big move online. Although sports betting sites reported losses, casino sites have generally experienced a slight increase. In periods of economic and social uncertainty, crime tends to go up, so it was a legitimate worry that there may have been an increase in illegal schemes such as setting up fake gambling sites online in order to trick naïve punters. However, this has not been the case, and the figures from the last twelve months prove it, with the number of complaints stable, and returns are what they were expected to be.
This is thanks to the government’s recent efforts with regulation on gambling as well as the actual betting companies endeavouring to give their customers a better experience online. Some new bookmakers make promotions exclusively for their online customers and try to perfect their website design and interface. The betting companies have also made sure that their mobile apps are the best that they can be and have offered punters chances every day to win for free, like Sky Vegas, Coral and even Ladbrokes.
There has also been a lot more interest in esport betting. Gambling companies have adapted to Covid-19 by allowing their customers to bet on one of the few sports that was relatively unaffected by the pandemic, and esports betting has experienced a monumental rise from the previous year.
Food
Restaurants were forced to close for a while during lockdown and even now, there are limits on the number of people allowed in one booking at restaurants in England. As it was difficult to encourage people to come in person to the restaurant, most of these establishments made efforts to be more available online. For example, Nandos started delivery for the first time, which meant that you could have your Peri-Peri sauce delivered to your house.
A measure was put in place called “Eat out to Help out” in the UK, where food at restaurants was fifty percent off. The government then subsidised the fifty percent, meaning the restaurants were not losing any money. This worked well to keep the restaurants afloat, but it may have encouraged a bigger spread of Covid-19.
Shopping
Shopping is an industry that was massively impacted by Covid-19. Less people are keen on going to shops, and it became, and to a certain extent still is, a necessity rather than a luxury, which means that people would go out to buy food but not clothes.
The shops’ solution was a move online, making online shopping much more popular. This is positive for both the shops and the customer, because it is very convenient to shop from the comfort of your own home, and the shops can reduce costs since websites are easier to run than in person shops.
Most big companies and brands put considerable time into developing online shopping during the pandemic, since it is a very real possibility that countries will have to go back into lockdown.
