Delaware North Vice President Luisa Woods has been in the U.S. gambling industry since the 1990s, and she’s devoted her career to figuring out the best approach to marketing. She sat down with Calvinayre.com‘s lead reporter Becky Liggero Fontana to offer her thoughts on how U.S. casinos can overcome the new challenges of the regulated market.
Woods believes that the omnichannel market and the cross-over between online and land-based casinos represents a huge opportunity for operators. Woods spoke at a Betting on Sports America panel about the challenges operators face in navigating state regulations. She told us it’s still all about ‘location’ for land-based operators:
“It’s a really big challenge that land-based operators are very used to thinking in terms of location. They’re used to thinking in terms of you know traffic patterns and obviously, Americans flow very freely between states. Our properties in West Virginia are a great example of this, particularly we have a property at Wheeling Island which is on the northern panhandle and a lot of people will work on one side of the border and live on the other or travel across the border for entertainment or other things.”
“Both Pennsylvania and Ohio have gaming facilities, however, people who live within the catchment area of that casino are very used to driving to our property. Suddenly, you’ve got a situation where when they’re sitting at home and watching television, they’re being introduced to the idea of there’s a mobile app that I could download and play on but it’s not necessarily associated with the gaming company that I typically frequent. This is something that every single operator is having to wrestle with; it becomes a challenge of which markets are you going to enter.”
Location is a factor when evaluating the potential return on a sports betting strategy. “I think when operators are looking at their sports betting strategy, that is a cost that they need to factor in,” she added. “A really important piece of their strategy is evaluating where is their player base and how are they going to be able to serve them, and maintain that relationship long-term.”
In the full interview, Woods explains the importance of extended lifetime value of a customer and how companies like DraftKings are tackling the omnichannel challenge in the U.S. market. And if you haven’t yet, watch all of our videos as they go up by subscribing to the CalvinAyre.com YouTube channel.
