The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the world works, and will continue to do so for a long time after any potential vaccine. Employees have proven that it is not only possible to do their jobs from home, but that in many cases shorter commutes and more time with family have resulted in greater productivity and higher levels of happiness.
Companies have been forced to up their online game to retain customers, and communication companies like Zoom have had to very quickly improve their apps so that they could support thousands of users being online at the same time. Supermarkets also have had to improve their delivery networks so that they could meet increased demand, and gyms and fitness centers have had to move their classes online.
Read on to find out which businesses are poised to reap the rewards of the great online migration.
Online Gambling
With the return of some sporting events, bookmakers have reported a huge increase in interest and revenue. According to the UK Gambling Commission, in June 2020, gross gambling yield (the amount retained by gambling operators after the payment of winnings) had gone up an incredible 115% in online real event betting.
Yahoo! Finance reported that the online gambling market is expected to reach US$90.36 billion in 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 11.5% for the period 2020-2024. For the best odds online you’ll want to see this.
A few factors account for this growth. The first and most important reason is how easy it is to gamble online through the use of an online sportsbook. Any eligible person can now place a bet from anywhere in the world through their laptop, phone or smartwatch. Greater accessibility has been accompanied by the fact that more people are going online in general as a result of the pandemic. Some of these users will be people who would previously have placed their bets in a shop, and some will be people who were looking for a fun way to pass the abundance of spare time that they found themselves with when they couldn’t socialize in the ways that they used to.
Now that these users have signed up to online gambling services they are highly likely to continue to use them, even once the pandemic has passed. As more and more sporting events return, the number of users is likely to continue to rise.
Smart Devices
As people have been forced to work and socialize online more and more, our smart devices have become even more important to us. If you are using a laptop all day for work, suddenly all those little quirks and bugs that you would have put up with in the past grow to become unbearable, and the cost of buying a brand new device that makes your user experience more enjoyable becomes more justifiable.
Not only this, but people are taking on more hobbies that potentially justify the purchase of a new smart device. For example, a huge number of people have taken up running as a hobby during the lockdown as it is one of the few forms of exercise that you can do without needing to go to a gym or sports facility. If you are running, then a smartwatch enables you to track your route and progress and listen to music without having to carry a cumbersome phone around with you.
Even for those people who haven’t found themselves taking up a new hobby, many people will have found themselves thinking about ways that they could improve their home as they are now spending more time there than they were before. Smart devices like a smart TV or speaker are obvious options for making your time at home more enjoyable.
Vegan Food
A less obvious sector that may boom over the next few years is the vegan food market. Over the past few years we have seen vegan food becoming more mainstream, with chains like McDonalds, KFC and Burger King starting to add vegan options to their menus.
New and innovative companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger have driven this change even further by investing heavily in researching and developing products that are much like their meaty counterparts in terms of taste, texture and nutritional content. Combine that with their intelligent use of both social media and celebrity endorsements and it’s easy to see why the movement is growing in popularity.
Add to this already snowballing new trend the fact that some of the blame behind the COVID-19 outbreak was apportioned to wet markets, and that slaughterhouses in the US were condemned for the spread of the disease among their workforces, and you can see how people might start to look at alternatives to meat over the next few years even without any environmental or ethical incentive.
Healthcare
As a result of the pandemic people are now more aware than ever of how essential healthcare really is. The BLS predicts that employment in healthcare occupations will grow 14% between 2018 and 2028, which is a much larger increase than other fields of work. This is mainly due to an aging population, which naturally leads to increased demand for healthcare.
On top of this, medicine is rapidly changing due to the introduction of new technologies to support and revolutionize treatments. For example, AI makes it possible to use the knowledge and experience of hundreds of doctors when designing treatment plans, and the invention of the smart bandage means that doctors can monitor how their patients are healing without ever having to look at a wound.