Summary

In this Thanksgiving-themed episode, Nick and Don list the top ten current slot industry trends for which they’re most thankful. Also in this episode, game speed and the Las Vegas Grand Prix (mea culpa edition).

Transcript

Nick Hogan:

Good morning, Don. How are things in the St. Louis area today?

Don Retzlaff:

Another beautiful day. How about Leiden?

Nick Hogan:

Very cold, very gray, and lots of rain. So we are fully in winter at this point. So let’s see. Don, Las Vegas’s second F-1 Grand Prix is finally in the tank with Englishman George Russell grabbing first place. Just seven seconds ahead of fellow Englishman Lewis Hamilton. So a good night for the Brits apparently.

Don Retzlaff:

It was a nice race.

Nick Hogan:

Did you watch it?

Don Retzlaff:

I did. Yeah, it came on about, I made 11PM local time and, but it was a really nice race. I really enjoyed it.

Nick Hogan:

What happened? Anything happened with Verstappen? Because he’s a big thing over here of course.

Don Retzlaff:

I think he finished fourth and that clinched a championship for him, if I remember right.

Nick Hogan:

Oh, really? Oh, okay. Well, cool, cool, cool. Okay. Well far more interesting for me than the race, I’m not much of an auto racing guy, but it’s everything surrounding it. So a few facts and figures that I dug up. So the average three-night room rate for the properties pulled in Vegas was $1,372 this year, down 41% from last year’s mean of $2,314. Airbnb rates were down 73% at $533 for a three-night stay versus last year’s $1,946. And ticket prices too were down 76% with general admission tickets in the South Koval Zone, which is more toward locals starting at 99 bucks. So if you were looking to place a price tag on the event’s first year hype, I guess you have a few data points there. It should make it a little easier, but equally interesting for me, Don, is the community outreach that Las Vegas Grand Prix did this year to extend an olive branch of sorts to the locals.

If you recall, last year’s disruptions were not only hugely inconvenient for locals, but materially damaging to a lot of local businesses and really kind of badly exacerbated by the kind of tone-deaf conduct of the race organizers. So if you recall, it was they were charging businesses located on the track, insane royalty fees and placing visual obstructions in front of businesses that refused to play ball. And even going so far as to put foil on the glass on the strip’s pedestrian bridges so that nobody could get a free look.

So wasn’t exactly making a lot of friends of Southern Nevadans there, but a few things they did this year. So apparently they really increased the coordination with municipal authorities and strip properties about traffic disruptions of street closures, that stuff. They created a locals-oriented Las Vegas Grand Prix fan experience, which was a free kind of locals-oriented event where people could check out F-1 stuff from local vendors and meet some of the teams, etc. And then they created these two locals-oriented spectator zones. One was at Caesars as I understand it, and the second one at that South Koval location that I mentioned. So it’s a bit early to hear how all this went down with Las Vegans, but I expect plenty of journalists are going to be writing this up over the coming weeks. So have you spoken with any locals about this year’s event, Don?

Don Retzlaff:

A little bit. It was more just like you just talked about, the growing pains from year one and the things that they were doing differently. I still have several friends that decide that’s the good weekend to get out of town,-

Nick Hogan:

Sure.

Don Retzlaff:

And to avoid all that, especially the people who live anywhere near the strip. I’ve got a friend who lives out by the Orleans and yeah, it’s a good weekend to get away. They go to Phoenix or they go up to Reno, Tahoe area. But I heard many of the same things. The fan experiences are great. I highly recommend that. If you ever get a chance to do one of the F-1 or Super Bowls, World Series, All-Star games, stuff like that, those are really neat experiences for fans and kids and so I’m glad to hear they’re doing better. Obviously had a lot of growing pains. I think it was, they didn’t reach those lofty expectations in year one, but I think they found a base that they can build off of.

Nick Hogan:

Yeah. And I see this as really positive because I mean, Las Vegas is anything, it is one very resilient city and I have no doubt that they’ll improve this iteratively and this will just get better and better. So anyway. Okay, so listener questions, Don. Before I read it, let me just say that we love to tackle any questions that anybody listening may have. If you have a question about what we’re presenting or something you like us to present, please drop us an email at reelcastreelmetrics.com. Again, that’s R-E-E-L-C-A-S-T at reelmetrics.com. Our policy is to keep all questions anonymous, so please speak directly and don’t worry about us revealing your identity. That’s not something we do.

Okay. Don. So this one comes from an operator in Southern Europe and reads, “Dear gentlemen, we at our casino listen to your show every month, and we have very positive results. Looking more closely at player demand and buying more of the big aristocrat and L&W games that you often discussed. This has worked very well. In playing them myself, I have the feeling that these games play much faster than other games. Do you track this? If so, are these games actually faster? Thank you very much. We find your show very useful here.” So Don, I know you track this, so I’ll just turn it over to you.

Don Retzlaff:

Well, first thank you for the kind words. It’s very thoughtful. I appreciate that. But yeah, it is something