Guests and Gaming
Adam Suliman, vice president of online gaming at JACK Entertainment, could not have anticipated a career in gaming. Entering the industry shortly after commercial casinos were approved in Ohio, he made the transition to casinos from Quicken Loans, whose principals founded the company JACK Entertainment, formerly known as Rock Gaming LLC. He now finds himself in the most exciting and expansive area of the gaming industry today.
Suliman’s gaming industry experience is literally from the ground up. With a degree in finance from Eastern Michigan University, he worked his way through business consulting roles at Quicken for six years before turning to gaming in 2010. Since becoming involved with JACK, Suliman had been in project management and operations roles before becoming vice president of ancillary gaming and innovation. In that role, Suliman handled iGaming, innovation, racing and internal process improvements.
Since transitioning to gaming, Suliman has been impressed with the pace of the industry and particularly interested in its guests. He is surrounded by like-minded professionals at JACK who believe there is room for tremendous improvement in the guest experience, stating, “We tend to focus on what we can do for the guest, and how we can make our properties and product just a little better. Ultimately, we believe that the numbers, revenue and accolades will follow.”
Suliman elaborates, “We’ve been willing to invest significant time and energy into developing products that simply make the experience at our properties better in the guest’s eyes.”
Suliman does not attribute his professional success to a single mentor or individual. He considers himself fortunate to have interacted with multiple uniquely talented professionals at JACK who rely heavily on one another for input and insights as the business has developed. This culture at JACK has fostered great success for the company in a relatively limited period and has positioned the company to take advantage of its handle on technology just as innovation has overtaken the future of the industry.
As for the future of gaming, Suliman believes that regional business will continue to evolve into a more experiential entertainment business that also just so happens to offer casino gaming, noting, “We’re going to continue to focus on removing friction points for our guests in order to make it easy for them to enjoy our properties. In addition to continuing to grow our brick-and-mortar businesses, it seems very likely that we’re going to enter the mobile/digital marketplace with our casino products in the future. The winners in that space are going to be the ones who can produce differentiated gaming experiences online.”
Not surprisingly, Suliman describes himself as a “process guy” who loves technologies that help people get what they want faster, with less friction. He spends a lot of time reading about how technology is being used in other industries.
