The Gauselmann Group is leaving the pandemic behind by recovering economically and expects that in 2022 it will achieve similar revenues to those of the 2019 financial year.
As the company recalls, sales revenue in the first half of 2019 was around 1,740 million euros. The first six months of 2022 closed with sales revenue of 1,746 million euros. Overall, the cumulative sales revenue of all group entities in 2019 was approximately €3.4 billion.
Paul Gauselmann, company founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: “It is great news that the pandemic has bottomed out and we are finally back in chartered territory again.”
“This success is primarily the fruit of our good ideas and the dedication of each and every one of our employees and once again goes to show what you can achieve with hard work and team spirit,” he added.
It should be remembered that the last two coronavirus years had cost the company some two billion euros in lost sales revenues. During the lockdowns, all gaming arcades, casinos, sports betting shops and shipboard casinos across Europe – as many as 1,000 outlets altogether – had had to close for around nine months. Operating costs, however, remained largely unchanged.
The Gauselmann Group stresses that the good development is also attributable to the group's increasing diversification. The Gauselmann Group is positioning itself on an ever-broader base – and in doing so is reducing its dependence on individual markets and business models. This is also reflected in the current sales performance.
A return to pre-COVID levels was only possible because with the development and expansion of international business operations and casinos, the company has tapped into two business areas that compensate for the increasingly difficult situation on the German home market. The most important markets in other European countries are currently the UK and Spain.
“From an entrepreneurial point of view, it was hugely important to drive forward our international business activities,” Paul Gauselmann explains. In the meantime, an ever-larger share of sales revenues, around 60%, is generated abroad.
In addition to internationalization, casinos are another major factor in sales success. As well as the casinos in Saxony-Anhalt and the investments in Berlin and Rhineland-Palatinate, the casinos in North Rhine-Westphalia have been an important addition to this business segment since 2021. A look at the figures of the casinos in Saxony-Anhalt shows how enormous the potential is in this area: already in the second year of operation by the Gauselmann Group, the number of visitors doubled several times over.
The only bitter pill in the general success story are the political conditions that govern commercial gaming in Germany. The ever-increasing restrictions have not only led to a reduction of more than 30 per cent of gaming machines, the closure of gaming arcades and thus also to the selective loss of jobs but have also diminished the attractiveness of the legal gaming offering.
This positive development also translates into greater job creation. In this way, the group ensures that the number of employees increased by 10.7 per cent in 2021, with the company now employing almost 15,000 people worldwide. All of this allows the Gauselmann Group to look to the future with renewed confidence.
In opposition to the strong German restrictions, the company refers to the experience in the UK market, which has shown that land-based and online games complement each other significantly, provided that the legislator allows a sufficiently attractive range of online game deals.
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