Casinos chase interactive games to lure Millennials
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Getting new customers involved in more interactive experiences is going to be a big part of the future for casinos in the United States and around the world, participants in a major gambling conference predicted last week.
Casino executives, digital experts and payment processors at the conference in Atlantic City agreed that casinos need to offer new experiences that directly involve the next generation. This involves new, nontraditional products such as competitive video game contests, skill-based slot machines, and daily fantasy sports and sports betting in states that allow it.
These would allow casinos to bring in new customers and revenue, the executives and experts said.
“I think all casinos, 10 years from now, will evolve and offer some sort of interactive experiences,” said Seth Schorr, chairman of the Downtown Grand casino in Las Vegas.
His casino has gone in big for e-sports, competitive video game tournaments.
“Young people now consider video games a sport,” he said. “It’s shocking. It took me a long time to get my head around that. I’m a 40-year-old casino owner who believes in the future of our industry. If I’m not going to take a risk for the future, who is?”
Internet gambling is offered in only three states: New Jersey, by far the largest market; Nevada and Delaware. But other states are considering it. Pennsylvania lawmakers moved a step closer to last week to making online gambling legal.
A prime opportunity for growth is the expansion of payment processing for online gambling, said Joe Pappano, senior vice president of the payment processing company Vantiv Entertainment Solutions. Three years ago, when New Jersey offered the first Internet bets, credit cards were used for only about 40 percent of transactions involving Internet gambling. That figure has now risen to more than 80 percent, he said.
Casinos remain unsure whether daily fantasy sports and sports betting are potential friends or enemies, participants on a panel said.
States across the nation are grappling with how to regulate daily fantasy sports, in which players create a roster of real-life athletes who earn points based on their performances in games.
Joseph Brennan, CEO of SportAD, a fantasy sports startup, said casino executives are looking at daily fantasy sports to lure Millennials.
But, he cautioned, it might be difficult to compete with industry leaders like DraftKings and FanDuel “that have spent billions of dollars to establish their brands.”
Brennan said casinos are perfect partners for daily fantasy sports companies because of the existing player databases and the casinos’ knowledge of their customers, their likes and gambling histories.
Sports betting is currently limited to just four states. Acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall urged the Supreme Court not to hear New Jersey’s appeal of a lower court decision that invalidated the state’s sports betting plan.
Caesars Entertainment was first in the country to try skill-based slot machines, which it installed at its Atlantic City casinos. Unlike traditional slot machines, which are solely dependent on luck, the new machines can let the skill of an individual player can influence the outcome.
But the company removed the 21 machines after six months because they were not generating enough money to cover the vendor fees, said senior vice president Melissa Price.
“We all understood that we were learning and experimenting,” she said.
But Price said the company remains committed to the concept and plans to try new machines when they are available.
Casinos also have to constantly update their offerings and keep up with their customers’ interests, said Vahe Baloulian, CEO of BetConstruct, which offers sports betting and online gambling software.
“The time will come when we’re saying, ‘This generation is not playing on their mobile phones anymore; they’re playing on something else we don’t know about.’ ”