At Resorts World Catskills in Monticello, N.Y., a mammoth waterfall cascades down rock walls behind a performance stage in the middle of the casino.
At Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Okla., customers walk through a primeval forest as they move between sections of the gaming floor.
(click to enlarge) Link Arch installation at Chocktaw Casino in Durant, Okla. Photo credit Joe Cantu.
At Motor City Casino in Detroit, an arched walkway morphs into an indoor version of the Fremont Street Experience, offering visitors a variety of shows, from fireworks to a bottom-of-the-sea view of swimming sharks.
All the scenes are virtual, thanks to the latest generation of digital signs. Such signage has changed dramatically from when “giant squares hanging on a wall” showing static images were common, says Dave Kubajak, senior vice president of sales, marketing, and operations at JCM Global, which did the Resorts World and Motor City installations and partnered with Gaming Capital Group and The Publicity Lab on the Choctaw installation.
Now the company offers what he calls “architectural signage:” custom shapes and designs displayed on curved screens, circles, cubes, even wrapped around pillars or on the floor.
The company’s latest addition is an “air curtain,” which consists of vertical strips of LEDs with gaps in between, allowing for a floor-to-ceiling wall that has up to 80 percent transparency but also shows digital images on one side. Such a wall between a restaurant area and a casino floor, for example, would let diners watch the action on the casino floor while people outside see advertisements or other content on the wall. Those outside could see into the restaurant when they get close.
“It’s a lot more of an interactive environment,” Kubajak says. “Instead of just staring at a solid wall, you’re actually able to see through both ways and get an experience with the content on it as well.”
(click to enlarge) Fireworks installation at Motor City Casino in Detroit.
JCM, which began in 1955 as Japan Cash Machine Inc. in Osaka, developed the first side-mounted bill validator for slot machines and is known as one of the world’s leading transaction technologies supplier for the banking and gaming industries.
It branched into digital signage in the early years of that industry, which has enjoyed strong growth. Digital Signage Today reported in June that despite the coronavirus pandemic, analysts expect the global digital signage market to reach $26.3 billion by 2027, increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.4 percent.
Kubajak said technology drives JCM’s advances in the signage market.
“It’s custom designs, built for custom applications,” he said. “And the technology to drive those is really high-speed, high-end computing technology. It has to be able to process large amounts of data and large amounts of math very quickly to drive content to a screen that’s no longer just a rectangle like your TV. It’s now a cube or a sphere or whatever custom shape that somebody might want.”
JCM has four types of products, including basic half-meter-square signs plus a variety of shapes, as well as television packages and displays for electronic table games. At Resorts World in New York City, for example, the company installed a huge circular sign above the ETG tables that shows the live play in addition to being able to split into 16 smaller screens to show sporting events and news.
(click to enlarge) Ring installation at Resorts World Catskills in Monticello, N.Y.
“We can even do one huge screen on the wall that splits into 64 miniscreens,” he adds.
At a Tokyo University, JCM installed LED panels on the entire floor of one room so satellite images could be broadcast there. People can walk on the panels.
JCM technicians work with a client’s marketing and design teams to come up with the content for the screens, and clients can control the content in real time.
Digital signage not only attracts people but also provides casinos a method to market their brand and inform customers, Kubajak says.
That can be helpful as casinos emphasize their safety steps amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“You can share information about what your facility has done to keep them safe. You can share information with them about where they need to go if something happens, if they don’t feel well, if there’s an emergency. That messaging and communications aspect of digital signage is just amazing, because it’s real-time communication,” he says. A casino staffer can easily update messages.
“If there’s a big screen with something on it, people stop and look. They just can’t help it,” Kubajak says. “If something changes, they’re going to notice it immediately.”
