Casinos of the future need to focus on augmented and virtual reality and other immersive experiences if they hope to attract Millennials and younger generations to their properties, according to a conference panel.
The future of the casino industry was among topics discussed Wednesday during the opening of the Casino Esport Conference in Las Vegas.
“For my casino for the next generation of customers, who are going to be very valuable, I would look at engaging and immersive experiences, all of which have a digital format with a social component such as Instagram, a photograph, or music,” said Oliver Lovat, CEO of the Denstone Group. “The problem I have is the guys who are here don’t really get it yet as a whole. It’s very frustrating, because somebody somewhere will buy into this stuff, and it will be a tremendous success.”
Lovat said Area15 in Las Vegas, the experiential retail, dining, and entertainment complex, is an example of what casinos could do. Area15 known for immersive entertainment, ranging from simulations, such as flying over large cities, to interactive art exhibits.
“Its focus is on the next generation of visitors and is a remarkable success,” Lovat said. “Before it was open, we looked at doing similar things for the larger operators in town, and they just didn’t get it.”
Robert Rippee, executive director of the UNLV Black Fire Innovation Hub, said such innovations as augmented and virtual reality and robotics can be game changers for the casino industry in the future.
“Five years ago in our innovation lab when we brought up the topic of robotics to operators, there was no interest,” Rippee said. “Today, they’re like, do you have a robot that does this? No, we don’t, but it can be developed.”
Rippee said the world is innovating to a metaverse- and data-driven environment that’s highly immersive.
“From our generation, we looked at the iPhone with marvel — carrying around a computer in your pocket,” Rippee said. “To the generation today, that’s their pathway to go have fun. The way technology is evolving and is picking up and we see a technologically enabled experience that’s seamless across multiple experiences in a beautiful space that we can’t experience anywhere else.”
Andrew Weilgus, executive director of the Esports Innovation Center at Stockton University, mentioned one example: a life-size Monopoly board could be something casinos entertain.
“That’s the kind of thing that if it was inside a casino and part of a game you remember, it would be a great experience,” Weilgus said.
Other upcoming immersive experiences could be tied to the casino industry, Weilgus added. One is people going to Madison Square Garden in New York City and watching a holographic arena of a battlefield.
“You’ll be able to see a Call of Duty tournament where people are playing on stage and you’re watching the soldiers fight it out right in front of you with all kinds of pomp and circumstance,” Weilgus said. “That’s the type of thing that augmented reality brings into the mix.”
Las Vegas hasn’t been particularly creative with new ideas, Lovat said. It has, however, been good at finding experiences at other places and exploiting them and ultimately bringing them to fruition.
“There’s some really cool stuff coming from the UK from the experiential side,” Lovat said. “The question is when you explain this to the casinos, a lot of properties have trouble defining who their customers are or should be. If you have a choice of putting in a 15,000-square-foot digital experience or a sports bar, which one do you pick? We do what we know.”
The history of the casino floor has gone from table games to slots to amenity driven and what they’ve sought to do over the course of the last 30 years is to go from single-action experiences to tandem or tridem experiences for customers. Casinos put on a show, and there’s dinner before the show and gambling afterward – three different revenue-generating opportunities.
“I’m a great believer that if we’re to successfully develop the casino floor for the next generation, we have to figure out who those customers are and generate loads of stuff for them to do to meet their functional, emotional, and tribal needs,” Lovat said. “We’ve played it too safe. We’re lucky that we’ve survived COVID and come back stronger, but there’s a huge upside for elevating to this next generation of customer. I don’t know who it is and where it’s going to come from, but somebody will do very well in the next 10 to 15 years on that.”
Weilgus said he remains optimistic about esports being part of that future. He said there are multiple ways to generate revenue, from paid tournaments to professional events; for example, League of Legends might bring a stop to a city.
“Those types of things will be a tremendous revenue generator for casinos once it’s worked out how it works effectively and ensure there are no hacks built into the system,” Weilgus said. “Once you can do it, it’s a tremendous attraction for the younger generation of people who are used to playing those games. Those are 40-year-olds now.”
