Not so long ago, when people spoke of cashless gaming to OPTX Co-founder and Co-CEO Brooke Fiumara, she looked at them as if they had “ten heads.”
“There’s no way that’s ever happening, period,” Fiumara said during the Global Gaming Expo education session “The Role of Disruption and Innovation in Gaming” last week at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas.
“Not going to happen, not doing it. Fast forward, here we are today, it’s happening. We talk about how capital is shaping gaming, it is literally changing things we thought were not possible. So now you start to question everything you think is impossible.”
Moderator Charlie Skinner, the president of Marker Trax, noted that the company’s concept had been around since the 1990s, when founder Gary Ellis noticed a player get a marker, then walk out of a casino without gambling. It took Ellis about 20 years to develop and refine the process and get a patent for Marker Trax’ cashless casino technology.
“There are people in this business who are moving mountains,” said Fiumara. “It has taken us 20 years, but we are there. And it’s really exciting because you see it all kinds of coming together. Companies, competitors, having to play nice because their customers demand it. They demand technologies that are going to work together.”
Global Gaming Women Board Member Kate White said that one of most important changes she’s witnessed is in what to expect from platforms. Operators demand more than they did even a few years ago.
“We’re not just making a one-size-fits-all-application anymore and selling it as it is,” White said. “When I have a meeting with a vendor, it’s what can you customize? What are you going to sell me with opportunities for additional integrations, or opportunities for plug-ins? We have to change and have the best product for our market in order to keep our customers. … We’re not just going into conversations about let me go buy ABC. It’s what does ABC do compared to the next product, how much can you change it, and how much can you customize it for what my specific needs are based on my own customers.”
One of the outcomes of the cashless advance has been “a lot of mergers and acquisitions,” according to Koin President Gary Larkin. Companies want to be all things to all people, Larkin said, but invariably that’s not what happens.
“You end up with suboptimal outcomes,” Larkin said, “up and down the spectrum, across the floor, in and out of the back office. They own that relationship, and they want to build a moat around that relationship and make sure no one else gets in. That’s counterintuitive to advancement and disruption and growth. It stifles the growth lessons and lessens the customer experience because they’re not getting optimal outcomes across every part of it.
“It also leads to these bottlenecks in data. I can’t over-stress the importance of data. I have great respect for what you’re doing and what you will do in the future because data is everything that’s happening in and out of the property. Everything the customer is doing when they’re with you and not with you helps inform you how better to serve that customer, that cohort of one position we try to get to while you’re delivering entertainment. Rich stuff comes to the individual, not based on a class, not based on yesterday’s dead data, but real-time decisioning on how to motivate something with that customer. It gives them value and value back to you.”
