South Korean casino operator Grand Korea Leisure Company Limited has reportedly announced that its aggregated gross gaming revenues for September fell by 76.5% year-on-year to approximately $8.12 million as a direct result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
According to a report from Inside Asian Gaming, the Seoul-headquartered firm used an official filing to reveal that the result for the 30-day month represented a decrease of 26.2% when compared with August’s finishing tally of about $11.02 million and took its nine-month total down by 53% year-on-year to some $146.31 million.
Ruinous reversal:
Grand Korea Leisure Company Limited is a subsidiary of the Korea Tourism Organization, which is affiliated with the nation’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and is responsible for a trio of Seven Luck Casino-branded venues in the cities of Seoul and Busan. The source reported that the September result was the worst the firm has recorded since re-opening these foreigner-only properties on May 6 following a month-long shutdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Pervasive anxiety:
The casino firm moreover detailed that September aggregated receipts from its extensive estate of gaming tables had declined by 77.5% year-on-year to around $6.74 million with associated machine sales having tumbled by 69.8% to just $1.38 million. The operator purportedly furthermore pronounced that these figures had signified drops of 29.2% and 7.1% when compared with August and were indicative of widespread nervousness on the part of its clientele with regards to entering a gambling establishment during a global pandemic.
Relevant relation:
South Korea was one of the first nations to be hit by the coronavirus pandemic and has so far recorded 425 deaths directly linked to the highly-contagious contagion including three in the last few days. Although the country of some 51.7 million people experienced a second wave of infections beginning from the middle of August, this uptick has since begun to level off with the number of active local cases currently standing at 1,734.