In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Rebecca Liggero, Simon Thomas of Hippodrome Casino explains how casino operators can lure younger generations to go to casinos.
There’s no denying that casino operators have had little difficulty attracting millennials to gamble in their brick-and-mortar facilities.
Most of those who are born between 1980 and 2000 have lots of reasons why they tend to stay out of casinos. For starters, younger generations probably find current slot products uninteresting. They are into skill-based games and they tend to be social in nature.
As casino operators have been scratch their heads in their search for the much vaunted solution to their problem, these millennials find themselves drawn to online gaming, particularly eSports.
Simon Thomas of Hippodrome Casino offers a solution to one of the hot-button issues in the gambling industry – casinos should ride on the popularity of eSports in order to lure the younger generation in casinos.
Thomas pointed out that they use sports like NFL in order to entice American clients to spend their money in the casino. The same strategy, according to Thomas, should be used by casino operators to attract younger clients.
“ESports, virtual sports for us, we can’t take bets being a mere casino being English regulations are crazy but it is a fantastic way of attracting more people into the building,” Thomas told CalvinAyre.com. We see eSports as exactly the same space. It’s incredibly popular, it is growing. The technology behind it is just going to keep changing exponentially and we’ll get better and better. And we could become a home for eSports fans, they will come to the building and they will see the attractions we have on offer.
He believes that introducing eSports in casinos will make younger players to become comfortable in the facility.
“The challenge we have on eSports is that the participants are generally quite young. And the people that are watching, when you look at the statistics, a lot of people watching it are used to play, so they might be slightly older, but they are all still lately 20s, which is a tad young for us,” Thomas explained. “But on the other hand, you get news coming to a casino at that age, then they will be comfortable with it and will hopefully keep coming.”
Meanwhile, Thomas said virtual sports may open lots of opportunities to casino operators that are in a jurisdiction that allows virtual sports betting.
“Virtual sports is slightly more challenging for us because a virtual sport is an RNG driven game you bet on and we can’t do betting yet. Assuming we can, it will be commercially interesting to us,” he explained. “But in terms of technology behind virtual betting, I think, like other technologies, it is an exponential business, so when you can actually not only bet on the race but you can choose the viewpoints, you can be the jockey for the race. It will makes it much more fun, much more interesting.”
