What will it take for the gambling industry to connect with younger customers and insure a future that doesn’t fizzle out when Baby Boomers head to the grave?
If recent efforts by Caesars Entertainment and Gamblit Gaming are any indication, that effort involves skill-based gambling machines that fuse together elements of traditional slots and modern video games. In fact, the two companies are planning on testing out a trio of skill-based devices on the floor of Caesar’s Planet Hollywood property sometime in the next few months.
Skill-based gambling machines offer players a 30-90 second game, such as a shooting baskets on a virtual basketball court, that pay out winners in a manner similar to slots. The big difference is that these machines are designed to be as interactive as possible.
Gamblit Gaming CEO Blaine Graboyes, himself a video game player, was inspired to design his machines after seeing attendees at a Vegas video game conference walk right past the casino floor without stopping to play. This lit the fuse that Gamblit, and the gaming industry, hope will bring Millennials to the casino.
In Graboyes’ eyes, the gamer/gambling connection is a slam dunk, as he described in a recent interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Gamers also have a propensity for gambling and they don’t have any place to get together and socialize. The opportunity was to create a destination at a casino that makes gamers feel like the cool kids.
The games at Planet Hollywood are not Caesars Interactive’s first flirtation with skill-based products. The company recently ran a similar test at one of their Atlantic City properties. In that instance, nearly 60 percent of the players on the new machines were under 40 (which constitutes something of a demographic miracle in a casino).