At one point during Wednesday’s panel session “The Next-Gen Player: How Emerging Tech is Reshaping Loyalty & Engagement,” moderator Jonathan Michaels pointed to reporter in the crowd and said, “There’s your headline.”
Michaels, the principal of Michaels Strategies, was referring to something Eilers & Krejcik Partner & Co-founder Adam Krejcik said at the Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow and Conference at the San Diego Convention Center. “I truly believe we will see a human being on Mars before we get online casino (in California),” Krejcik said to laughs from the audience.
Mars might be the better bet, given the chaos endemic to California’s diffident support for online sports betting.
“The short story here is is embracing these new forms of technology early on,” Krejcik said. “I think we have a tendency in the gaming world to be a little behind on technology. I know this is called ‘How Emerging Tech is Shaping Loyalty’ and whatnot, but the truth of the matter is gaming, in the way it’s structured for many right reasons doesn’t try innovations.
“There are a lot of restrictions, a lot of licensing, so this is typically not an industry where you see cutting-edge disruptive technology. That’s why it’s all the more important when you do see forms of online digital entertainment that you act early. You act as aggressively as you can.”
The reluctance to embrace new forms of online gambling, in California and elsewhere, might be because of an innate distrust of change. But Marcus Yoder, Playtech’s chief commercial officer, thinks online sports betting will be considered in California in the near future.
“I think we’re going to see a battle in California again in the next two to three years,” said Yoder. “But the California tribes have a unified stanc. It’s going to be on their terms. This is not going to be FanDuel, it’s not going to be BetMGM, it’s going to be us doing this.”
There are other areas of the country where tribes have launched social casino and newer forms of gambling. Krejcik noted that the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes have embraced social casino operations and seem to more open-minded around online sports betting and other new developments.
“I live in California. I love California,” Krejcik said. “But as a Californian, it’s frustrating to have no options for any type of regulated online betting. There were some developments yesterday on the online betting side, but we’ve seen this story before. And as I told Jonathan, the path of least resistance in California is the status quo.”
Everi’s vice president, sales operations, Mick Ingersoll notes that any tribe seeking to adopt new forms of gambling should “do their due diligence. Find good partners. Oftentimes, you see companies that pop up out of nowhere, they’re gone in a year, they were never supported.
“Just make sure that you’re making a really good choice when you determine who you’re going to partner with and trust your business with. They should handle it as an investment from your side. They should be thinking strategically with you. They should align themselves with all your long-term goals in all the different areas of the business, because there’s probably going to be a lot of overlap if it’s digital or a brick and mortar. All those things are going to going to converge, because you’re targeting your players, your business.”
Yoder likes to think about expansion from a vision of concentric circles. What’s on a casino floor that can be expanded from there? “You know that you can use Class III table games, Class II games on the floor, go head and replicate that into a mobile app where your players already exist. And have that run geofenced into that same casino floor.
“And once everybody is comfortable with that, meaning your tribal council, your relationship with the state government and operations, then expand it out to the pool, the golf course, your hotel and go from there into wholly sanctioned tribal lands.”
