Blame it on the Weather: Climate and its Impact on Gambling

You know what they say – when you’ve got nobody to blame, blame it on the weather.  The climate has been blamed for many things, especially in the past decade.  Economies have crashed because of weather-related natural disasters, thousands of lives have been lost, tourism has risen and fallen and world travel has been effected.  This weekend, stuck in a hotel room in the UK on the back end of a hurricane warning, got me thinking how the climate has impacted gambling in the past few years.

If you look at live gambling, I suppose that the weather probably had a direct and indirect affect on the fact that numbers at many casinos dropped.  Many natural disasters around the world – more than usual in the grand scheme of things – meant that tourists may have not been able to arrive at their favorite gambling destinations, leading to a drop in the number of visitors.   If you look at some of the flooding and storms that took place around the world, especially the United States, you’ll see that many casinos had to close their doors, with some even experiencing flooding due to rising rivers.  Obviously, a lot of money was lost and it would take months to get a place up and running once more if damage was caused – leading to even bigger problems.

But on the flip side, you could easily see how extreme weather conditions would affect online gambling in a positive way.  Take lil’ old me as an example this weekend.  Not wanting to brave the howling winds outdoors, I opted to stay in my hotel room and kept myself entertained for hours by logging onto an online poker site and enjoying some fast-paced tournaments – snug and warm while the weather battled outside.  I even got a chance to play poker against my brother who was sitting up in the wee hours of the morning in LA!

So how many more people opt to play online slots or other casino games while the weather is bad?  The longer you are forced to stay indoors, the more tempting the idea of gambling online is – at least for me!  So, when push comes to shove, if you can’t find anything else to blame the growing popularity of online gambling on, blame it on the weather!