Signups got under way this week for Las Vegas-based Engaged Nation’s nationwide NFL contest sponsored by Bud Light, and casinos across the country, including Las Vegas, are rolling out a pick-em football contest that will pay up to $1 million.
The NFL season starts next week and Engaged Nation, the digital engagement marketing firm whose sister company publishes Gaming Today, has expanded its offerings to casinos with its Million Dollar Pro Football Frenzy Promotion in three separate contests. This is the fourth year of the contest.
It’s part of an online-to-on-property promotion that allows casinos to digitally engage customers and drive visits and revenue from pro football fans and non-fans alike. Engaged Nation CEO Jerry Epstein said they offered similar engagements with casino customers when properties were closed during COVID-19, helping to excite customers during the shutdown, then attract them back to the casinos when they reopened.
Epstein said Engaged Nation has become more relevant than ever in using its platform to capture email addresses and contact points for casinos to market to customers. That takes advantage of people spending 60 percent more time online and it provides an opportunity to remind people of the amenities and promotions for hotel and food offerings.
“Rampart Casino (in Las Vegas) wanted us to get people to come back, but they were very concerned about having too many people for a grand-finale event, so we streamed it live,” Epstein said. “You could play online or go to the property, but we had to limit the number for their on-floor promotion. We’re using digital engagement and raising the level of its sophistication to include so many people that really never had an interest before.”
Casinos can offer the contest via their social-media accounts, customer-loyalty programs and advertising strategies, and Epstein said there’s a pent-up demand for more online fun and sports-related programming as casinos deal with the pandemic. According to Epstein, the contests have given casinos a 300 percent return on investment, a 20 percent increase year over year in property revenue metrics, thousands of new customer sign-ups for players club cards and more than $1 million in incremental revenue.
The full-season configuration of the Gaming Today Pro Football Frenzy launches at participating tribal and commercial casinos, including the Rampart in Las Vegas, with a $1 million prize for picking at least 225 winners (Sunday and Monday games only) during the 17-week season. There’s no entry fee and the contests offer a $100 prize for the best picker each week, along with a $2,000 prize pool for the top five pickers over the season.
There’s even a grand-prize drawing, which includes everyone who participates, for a 60-inch 4K Ultra HD TV with soundbar and subwoofer and a Sony PS4 console with the Madden NFL game.
A second promotion called Playoff Rush added in 2019 starts Thanksgiving week and lasts six weeks, with a $100,000 grand prize for getting all 25 proposition picks correct and other prizes for falling below that mark.
Third is the Big Game Challenge themed to the Super Bowl. It runs two weeks and includes daily games and a $100,000 prop-card grand prize for getting 25 correct.
“Each year we try to add a new element to it,” Epstein said. “We think it’s going to be incredibly popular this year, because a lot of properties are concerned the NFL season may not be intact through all 17 weeks, given what’s happened with baseball. We not only get the avid sports fan, but we get the casual and non-sports fan. It generates a lot of excitement.”
The Bud Light Football Frenzy sanctioned by the NFL is promoted through more than 3,000 Speedway convenience stores across the country. There are 17 weekly winners of a $300 NFL Shop gift cards and one grand-prize winner of a customized tailgating trailer worth $14,000 that has 42-inch LED HDTV, full-motion TV wall mount, Sony 1000w 5.1 home-theater system with Bluetooth, DISH Network HD receiver, and portable tailgating generator.
For more information, click here.
Epstein said they were approached by Anheuser Busch, the maker of Budweiser brands, to drive customers to convenience stores during the pandemic, and now they are turning to a football promotion to continue that engagement.
“We’ve gone well beyond the casino industry and are now beginning to represent some of the biggest global brands out there,” Epstein said. “People think we’re the future for connecting with people online. We’ve come a long way and our football promotions are one of many that are popular in and out of the casino industry. We have become so relevant today. Moving forward, marketing is going to become more important, because you’re going to need to steal market share from your competitors.”
