Last in an exclusive series examining the AGA’s Strategic Plan
If the gaming industry’s past two decades where characterized by a rapid and dramatic expansion into new jurisdictions across the United States, growth over the next two must come via changes to public policy that create incremental opportunities and new efficiencies.
That’s how the American Gaming Association sees the industry’s growth trajectory in the coming years.
“The simple truth is that geographic expansion, while opportunities do exist, simply isn’t capable of driving growth for the next 10-20 years,” said Geoff Freeman, the group’s president and chief executive officer.
The AGA’s 2020 Strategic Plan is highlighted by an emphasis on influencing policy decisions at both the federal and state level in ways that generate new markets, synergies and operating efficiencies.
“The most obvious way to drive growth is to take a hard look at the polices that guided our expansion around the country and to ask ‘Are those policies conducive to reinvestment? Are they conducive to innovation? Or are they conducive to providing our grandfather’s image of what a casino product once was?” Freeman asked rhetorically.
“In many instances, I think it’s the latter.”
This new landscape is necessitating that the AGA continue its transformation away from a Washington-centric focus to being more proactively involved at state and local levels – whether that means assisting in lobbying and advocacy efforts or simply serving as a repository of information and best practices.
“What the industry needs to do is get out ahead and create an environment where we can innovate and reinvest, and so much of that will happen not in Washington but at the state level,” Freeman said.
“That’s where those changes are taking place and that’s where the AGA needs to be more proactive.”
The ethos is admittedly, a substantial shift away from the group’s modus operandi over the past two decades.
“This organization when it first started had a very simple goal which was to keep Washington out of our business – and that succeeded for many, many years,” Freeman explained. “With gaming’s expansion and the inconsistencies across state lines, it has created an obligation on our part to come in and try to be a resource.”
He offered examples of areas like fingerprinting and uniformity in shipping regulations as low-hanging fruit examples whereby convergence regulations across state borders could eliminate redundant procedures and offer significant savings.
“If we can streamline so that the machine that’s being sent to Mississippi is the same machine being sent to Louisiana is the same machine that’s going to Oklahoma, imagine the cost savings that could be provided through that,” Freeman said.
“Growth through public policy is not just increasing the top line it can also be about decreasing the expense line.”
A crucial aspect of fighting state-level policy battles will be conquering once and for all the fear of problem gambling, which Freeman says is the one central theme that all-too-often holds back the adoption of regulations and polices that could incent growth.
The AGA is spearheading a push to reframe the narrative on responsible gaming issues from that of a corporate social responsibility program to that of a critical impediment to the industry’s profitability.
At the Global Gaming Expo last October, the group launched a new responsibility gaming collaborative intended to bring the widest possible group of stakeholders, such as the National Indian Gaming Association, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, state lotteries, groups like the National Conference on Problem Gambling and academia, under the same tent to think critically about addressing the issue.
For its part, the AGA’s effort will involve a push to debunk programs that aren’t effective while unifying the industry behind those that are, as well as holding governments accountable for dollars that they have agreed to allocate toward gambling addiction.
“We’ve done a very good job of demonstrating what doesn’t work in terms of responsible gaming techniques, in terms of blowing up these concepts that people come up with where there’s no peer reviewed science,” Freeman said.
“I think the future will be defined by demonstrating what does work.”
