When it comes to big-named slot brands for a casino, they have the power to break through the noise and clutter of a busy gaming floor or online world.
Customers might be surprised, however, that licensed brands that range from Wheel of Fortune to Game of Thrones aren’t dominating the floors.
“I think if you walk the floor, you would think there’s been an over proliferation and pervasiveness of licensed games,” said Roger Sharpe, director of brand licensing with Everi. “[But] among the thousands of games that have been introduced and launched over the past 20 years, only appropriately 400 have been licensed brands. And that doesn’t take into account that some have been done a second, third or fourth time. The percentage is still somewhat low if you look in the aggregate – about five to 8 percent of the total output that gets to the casino floor with some type of a licensed game.”
Sharpe was part of a panel discussion at the Global Gaming Expo on ‘Brand Equity: Licensing and Partnership Opportunities for the Gaming Industry.’
If manufacturers have done it “appropriately and correctly,” hopefully that licensed theme stands out and is successful, Sharpe said.
“We’re in the entertainment business and, ideally, what we want to do is get people’s attention,” Sharpe said. “Licensing, good, bad or indifferent, is at least going to get somebody’s attention whether it’s a color, image, sound or theme itself. Somehow, it has to break through the volume of equipment that exists on that floor.”
Jeff Michel, vice president of business affairs for Scientific Games, said the regulatory framework of how companies are allowed or aren’t allowed to pay royalties to licensors impacts how deals are structured.
“The proliferation of online gaming, especially social gaming, has boosted prices of licenses more recently, which has correlated to more competition and reduced floor space for licensed brands in the physical land-based casino market… Revenue potential has largely decreased in our market,” Michel said. He went on to say that a lot of licensors like “to give as little property for as much money as they can,” and he views that as a less than ideal approach.
Scientific Games has unveiled three slots at G2E from the James Bond franchise it acquired this year. Michel said that’s a great example of a franchise that goes back 54 years and has made footage available.
“This is 54 years, 24 movies – and future movies – and the licensor understood what we were looking to do with this brand, opened the vault and gave us broad rights to almost all the footage they have,” Michel said. “It’s up to us to figure out how to utilize it and maximize it.”
The Bond games will be launched over the next couple of months to the next couple of quarters.
“It will be something out of the box exploited on the casino floor, and you will see the games in the social gaming segment and, down the road, lottery products,” Michel said.
When it comes to slot development, Sharpe said research is a critical component. That includes internal focus groups to help determine what resonates with their target audience, but it’s also about talking with customers.
“One of the greatest concerns is trying to overestimate who our market is,” Sharpe said. “It’s one thing to think that our audience is people on the Strip. It’s really off-Strip that matters. It’s Red Rock, Station, Green Valley and all these places where you are getting people coming back on a regular basis. Something may be highly rated by the ratings, and the viewership and box office might not necessarily correlate to what our audience likes.”
Siobhan Lane, senior vice president of marketing and gaming with Aristocrat Technologies, said brands are most successful when there’s an organic passion for the intellectual property, whether it’s a television show, movie or musical artist.
“The Walking Dead was a really neat brand for us,” Lane said. “We secured this deal when The Walking Dead was in its second season, and… it’s risky to secure something like that very early in its life, but the payoff can be big. It’s had a loyal following but not everybody was a fan of the show. AMC partnered with us and marketed the product through their channels and on their social media and on their Talking Dead show. They put inserts into their DVDs. It was really an opportunity for us to reach a mass audience that we wouldn’t traditionally market to, or that would have cost a lot to market to. For them to fund and help to facilitate that is a big value added for us.”
Lane said television shows “are quite (a) successful medium for us” because they are running over time and there’s a greater level of awareness among consumers versus a summer movie that’s going to hit once without a proven franchise behind it.
“HBO has a high level of brand integrity, and we have seen that with Game of Thrones and Westworld“, Lane said.
Sharpe said trying to predict what movies or television shows will pay off “is a crapshoot.” The studios don’t know themselves, and before the first movie opens they may talk about a trilogy that never happens, he said. Then there is Guardians of the Galaxy, which was a surprise success that led to a sequel, and Deadpool, which was dead until actor Ryan Reynolds came with a script with a harder edge, Sharpe said.
There are a lot of unknowns to deal with, Sharpe said; shows end because of cast salary demands or actors wanting to move on.
“I think there’s always uncertainty to any of the mediums we wind up pulling from,” Sharpe said. “A lot of it is just timing.”
The other caveat is the development of games can take anywhere from 18 to 24 months, meaning a deal signed today may not hit the floor until 2019, Sharpe said.
“This is one of the great trials and tribulations of the industry,” Sharpe said. “How do you gauge that? How do you engage your internal resources, your timeframe and what your lead time development cycles are as well as resources to ensure what you’re doing is going to be the best it possibly can be? By the time you bring it out, is it still relevant? Or is the show off the air and getting forgotten? ‘Yeah, I kind of remember that show.’ You don’t want that to ever be the case.”
Lane said it’s important to remember the license of the brand is only one component of the game, and “it might get butts in the seat to try it out if they have affinity of the brand.”
Hardware also plays a role, as do game mechanics. Ultimately, the math and game design is going to sustain it on the casino floor, she said.
“Brand plays one role in a formula of what makes a great game,” Lane said. “Perhaps targeting certain demographics early on in the rollout might be mindful but eventually, if it’s a good game, players talk to each other and they will try it despite the branding. When Sex and the City rolled out, you think you’re only going to get females in that seat, but we saw just as many males playing that game. If it’s a good game, it can reach beyond the designed demographics.”
The risk is minimized by going back and looking at the analytics to get a determination of what’s going to work, Sharpe said. It may not be geared towards the prime audience, but they may have familiarity because they’re buying it for their grandchildren, he said.
There’s a lot of intellectual property in that universe when you think of a 55-year-old player and what their experiences were in their 20s and 30s that can be turned into a “functional entertaining and immersive experience with a slot machine whether it’s done for online play for brick and mortar,” Sharpe said.
“Those are the decisions we wind up making,” Sharpe said. “More often than not, and I will speak on behalf of all of the companies, we would like to think our success rate is greater than our failure rate. I think all of us are willing to say that not everything has worked to expectations, and the hope is when we stub our toe, it’s a toe and not our entire foot.”
