William Hill US CEO on coronavirus: "I don't think there's any long-lasting impact on sports betting"

William Hill US furloughed 600 sports books employees after COVID-19 shut down casinos across the country. Joe Asher, CEO of the UK company’s US market, has given up his salary to fund the new William Hill USA Foundation, which aims to provide assistance for company employees recently furloughed or laid off during the pandemic, until sports resume.

“This too shall pass,” he said in an interview with the USA TODAY Network. However, he believes this is different from anything he has ever seen. He said the financial crisis was really hard in Las Vegas, but there wasn’t the overlay of a public health crisis on top of it: “This is on a different scale, because you have both the business crisis and the public health crisis, but there's only so much you can do on the business side until the public health side gets addressed. It's difficult, but the end of the world only happens once, and this is not it. We will get through this.”

As for the effects in sports betting, Asher doesn’t see any long-lasting impact from this. He noted that William Hill has been in business 86 years and survived the bombing in World War II and everything that's happened since: “We'll get through it, but it's hard.”

When asked about the possibility of people betting online only, he said the mobile business will come back quicker. He argued that mobile as a percentage of the business has been growing every year, and in Nevada William Hill does two-thirds of business on mobile already, with higher percentages in Iowa and New Jersey. 

“But people will still patronize the retail sportsbooks, because of the social experience it brings. Now, it's going to take a little time to get back to those social experiences, but there's no doubt we will. During times of difficulty, Americans like to watch sports as a diversion. It helps us get through the tough times. The sooner we can get these games going again, even if it's front of an empty arena – which I think it's probably likely – to give people something to look at besides the doom and gloom coverage on TV, it's important,” Asher said.

“That can't happen until the participants feel safe, and they are absolutely entitled to feel it's safe for them to play, but we need to get to that point. It has such a positive impact on people's emotions and the national psyche. Hopefully, we get to it sooner rather than later and start to give people a sense of normalcy in their lives,” he concluded.