It’s only fitting that Gaming Today and Engaged Nation now share the same office building in southwest Las Vegas.
When Engaged Nation, the gamified marketing company led by casino industry veteran Bill Paulos, acquired Gaming Today in August, it acquired a publication poised to take advantage of the expansion of sports betting across the country. It has already begun to do so by distributing the paper to sportsbooks in states where sports betting is newly legal.
Coupled with the casinos Engaged Nation serves with its online games and virtual-currency digital marketing, the new sister companies look to drive more customers to sportsbooks.
Prior to the start of the NFL season, Gaming Today launched a free football contest offering a million dollar prize to the player who picks the most regular season winners, and thousands of dollars in other prizes to players on a weekly and year-long basis. The contest is open online to the entire world and is powered by Engaged Nations’ system of online gamification.
Engaged Nation does a pick the bracket contest for the NCAA basketball tournament and offers football and prop sports picks using virtual currency. It’s also building a database of legalized sports bettors, even for states currently without sports betting, so casinos can get a jump on the competition.
Gaming Today has about 50,000 unique visits a month on its website, and there are plans to use Engaged Nation to upgrade the site and add to its content
“Part of the reason that acquisition was made was to take a look at potential synergies between Engaged Nation and Gaming Today,” said Engaged Nation CEO Jerry Epstein. “We think we have an amazing one-two punch, and that we can offer something in the marketplace that no one else is offering.”
For one, Epstein said, the expansion of sports betting is creating a new base of bettors who might be too intimidated or uncertain to walk up to a betting window and lay down a bet. Many might not know, for example, what a parlay is.
“What we are looking at putting together is a Sports 101 tutorial of how to bet sports,” Epstein said. “As legalized gaming becomes more prolific throughout the country, we feel we will be providing a tremendous service. We realized that we could utilize our gamified platform and our products to teach people about sports betting. It’s a perfect combination, and we feel casinos will be interested.”
Paulos, a former casino owner himself, said the timing was perfect to acquire Gaming Today. He said he’s excited about what’s going to happen over the next five to 10 years and how the combination of the two businesses will not only help increase the number of sports bettors but educate them.
“With the expansion of sports betting, we have a great advantage (with Gaming Today),” Paulos said. “It’s not a tout sheet. You have prognosticators coming out of the woodwork. We’re not that at all. We’re for the enjoyment of the sports bettor.”
Paulos said casinos have spent millions of dollars trying to attract millennials into their properties. Many will admit it hasn’t been successful. Sports betting can help with that, he says, because that’s a gaming option that spans all generations.
“Guys from 21 to 71 will stand around together trying to make a bet on a football game,” he says.
A 24-page print daily that also offers a full online subscription, Gaming Today has traditionally been circulated in casinos throughout Las Vegas and horse tracks and card clubs in California. Paulos plans to expand distribution to other states as their sports betting is advanced. It currently has a circulation of about 25,000.
“We’re going to be distributed to 100,000 by the end of the football season,” Paulos said. “That’s a big jump. We’re now starting in some cases to deliver more on Fridays because books are running out of them quickly.”
Paulos said the publication is in 80 to 90 percent of sports books in Las Vegas. Gaming Today recently changed from Tuesday to Wednesday distribution in order to carry the outcome of Monday Night Football. That gives sportsbook operators who give their picks weekly more time and better information for analysis, and writers more time to gather information as well.
Gaming Today only has one edition today, but that could change, with editions for each marketplace. Already in New Jersey and Mississippi, markets currently on the horizon are Delaware and West Virginia.
“With the proliferation of sports betting across the country, we see a great opportunity to head into these jurisdictions,” said Gaming Today General Manager Howard Barish. “The competitive advantage is that many of these sports book managers and directors started (in Nevada) and are quite familiar and comfortable with the Gaming Today brand.”
Barish said they’ve changed the font to make it easier to read and altered the layout so football, baseball and other sports now have their own sections.
“We wanted to keep it simple,” Barish said. “People look at the sports board and there’s a lot of head swiveling. We wanted to make it easy for the reader.”
A future change will make the publication less Las Vegas-centric and more focused on the national scene, Barish said. They plan an insert using regional printers where the middle four pages could be a Gulf Coast or New Jersey Shore edition to fit those marketplaces.
Those issues would carry local ads, he said.
“People in Mississippi, for example, might not be interested in anything other than the sports data and selections, not stories about industry movement in Las Vegas,” Barish said. “We’re very excited about broadening our horizons… we have writers constantly asking us to contribute because they see the same thing.”
