Are You Experienced?

It seems that gambling is now in everybody’s home. Whether it’s sportsbooks, “social” casinos, sweepstakes casinos, legal online gaming, illegal offshore gaming, or now, the predictions market, there’s no reason to get into your car and drive anywhere to gamble. You can do it from your couch, from your car, on the subway, on the throne or wherever.

So where does that leave the bricks-and-mortar casinos that used to depend upon this need to travel to gamble? How can casinos convince you to get dressed and hop in your car or board public transportation to come to their property?

The experts say that you must create an experience that makes your existing customers and potential new clients want to come to your place of business. If gambling is secondary, that experience should be the primary reason why people arrive.

So what does that experience include? For a long time, some people in our business called it gaming entertainment, so if the gaming part is secondary, entertainment must be part of the primary reason. Let’s define entertainment, then, with gambling excluded.

Entertainment brings pleasure, diversion or amusement. In the land-based casino setting, that could include a wide variety of things, such as a lounge singer or band, a headliner, karaoke night or simply people-watching around the pool.

A sports bar is the perfect mix. It blends the betting element with the sports that people love. They follow their teams, and if they can’t be at the game cheering them on, they can gather with like-minded fans to cheer together. And many games are memorable, so you’ll remember where you were when your team won. And coincidentally, you can bet there. When you bet on a DraftKings or FanDuel app without any concrete location, some of that element is lost.

But surely, good customer service really makes the experience. That’s only if your front-line employees are naturally friendly and trained to handle most of the situations they’ll encounter. One unpleasant episode could ruin any experience. Customers want to be treated like they’re special. One misstep and it’s over.

The omnipresent players club should create a good experience. After all, you are rewarding your best customers, and they will respond favorably with loyalty to your brand. But when you change the rules in midstream, that experience evaporates. When good players receive less while expecting at least the same level of rewards, the experience dissolves.

But you are a casino, right? So gambling should create the experience that the players crave. They want time on device, reasonable payouts, and rules that don’t suck. They want pleasant interactions with casino personnel. When you throw low-RTP slots, triple-zero roulette and 6/5 blackjack at them along with high minimums and sullen employees, that experience can’t be good.

So you say you care about your employees and your customers. You only want the best for them. But then you are the only place on the planet that allows indoor smoking! You’re slowly poisoning your customers and your employees. You cling to the fallacy that a smoking ban would chase away customers, without realizing that the vast majority of Americans do not smoke and do not want to be around it. You preclude any experience for a non-smoker by sticking to this deadly practice.

But the “experience” strategy isn’t just limited to bricks-and-mortar joints. The online gambling sites are realizing that they can create unique gambling experiences that will subtly separate their players from their money. The “live” dealer phenomenon isn’t going away. When players are recognized online, they tend to spend more time there. And because the demographic of the online player skews younger than those who actually visit casinos, the threat widens.

On the last page of this magazine, you’ll see part of my interview with Jack Binion for our new Gaming Legacy Podcast. Please check it out on the GGB magazine website. His father Benny Binion had a slogan—good food, good drinks, good gamble. Binion knew how to create an unforgettable experience by treating customers with respect and rewarding them for their loyalty.

There are still casinos that do that very well. The small Ellis Island casino close to the Strip in Las Vegas understands how to do this.

I was in there recently on a weeknight. Even though it is in the midst of a massive expansion, the casino was packed with tourists and locals alike because owner Gary Ellis is like a modern-day Benny Binion. He’s taken technology and combined it with that Binion slogan to create an experience that is memorable. We can all do that if we try.