Holland Casino revenue falls 8.7% despite online launch
The launch of online gaming in October was not enough to compensate for the loss of land-based casino revenue.
The Netherlands.- The Dutch casino brand Holland Casino has reported full-year revenue of €304.2m for 2021. That’s a drop of 8.7 per cent year-on-year.
Online gaming, which Holland Casino began offering on the launch of the Netherlands’ regulated market on October 2, generated €40.4m, but that wasn’t enough to make up for the decline in land-based casino revenue caused by Covid-19 restrictions.
Holland Casino’s land-based venues were closed for 168 days in 2021 due to pandemic countermeasures and faced further restrictions through the rest of the year.
Land-based slot machines generated just over half of all Holland Casino’s revenue at €152.4m, down 18 per cent year-on-year. Table game revenue fell 25.5 per cent to €94.1m. Tips accounted for €8.2m, a drop of 23.4 per cent, food and beverage revenue €7.9m, down 25.6 per cent, and other revenue €1.2m, down 28.2 per cent.
As for online gaming, Holland Casino said its revenue of €40.4m represented more than 20 per cent of the €185m total revenue recorded by the newly regulated Dutch online gambling market in its first three months from October 2 to December 31.
Holland Casino paid €85.2m in taxes and €279.9m in operating expenses. It reported a pre-tax loss of €64.3m, reduced to €45.7m after a €18.6m tax benefit.
Chief financial officer Ruud Bergervoet said: “Despite the negative figures, we are in good financial shape at core. This is partly thanks to Holland Casino’s agility and to the government support, which enabled us to retain a large proportion of the jobs in our company.
“It also became clear in 2020 that we needed to accelerate work on creating a future-proof Holland Casino. This is why we launched the Horizon restructuring project, in which, in addition to cost savings, we also looked at how we could manage the organisation as a whole more efficiently and effectively.
“The investments in the two new casinos in Utrecht and Venlo are also paying off. We also invested in our renewed restaurants.”
Bergervoet added that figures had immediately following the lifting of remaining Covid-19 restrictions on Holland Casino’s land-based venues on March 23. As a result, the company will no longer use the Netherlands’ salary subsidy scheme, Noodmaatregel Overbrugging Werkgelegenheid (NOW) as of Q1.
Last week, Holland Casino announced that it had promoted Malinda Miener to the position of chief compliance officer. Miener joined the company last year as director of compliance.
A former Royal Netherlands Navy officer and general counsel at Dutch science body TNO, she has been responsible for prevention policy and compliance with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing legislation. She will now join the company’s board and work to further advance its commitment to responsible gaming.
Last week, the European Casino Association (ECA) announced that Holland Casino’s vice president of gaming and services Pieter Boers will join its board to replace Erwin van Lambaart as the board’s representative for The Netherlands.
Van Lambaart left Holland Casino to become CEO of Casinos Austria at the start of the month. He will now represent Austria on ECA’s board following the retirement of Bettina Glatz-Kremsner as general director of Casinos Austria.
