When it comes to luring millennials to casinos to gamble, a panel of game and slot manufacturers said Monday that patience is needed to let them mature, and that there’s still great opportunities to be had with baby boomers.
That conclusion highlighted “The Power of Tech: Suppliers’ Perspectives in Leveraging Technology to Bring Added Value to Your Customers,” a panel held on the first day of the 2018 Global Gaming Expo. The panel was part of an educational seminar presented by Global Gaming Women.
“The focus has been heavy on millennials when the baby boomer generation is our core consumer today, and that is not going to change anytime soon,” said Siobhan Lane, senior vice president of marketing and gaming operations for Aristocrat. “(Baby boomers) represent 33 percent of the population but 70 percent of the discretionary spending. That is huge, and life expectancy is lengthening, not shortening. The broader question is how we cultivate new players, whether they are part of the millennial generation, Gen X or baby boomers.”
The industry needs to look inside those generational segments, Lane said. Female baby boomers live on average five years longer than males, and their income is growing at a much faster rate as the income gap narrows.
“It’s important to have a partnership with operators, because we can develop a new product that might appeal to a new base of players but if it’s held to the same expectations as the core consumer products, then will likely not meet those metrics,” Lane said. “(The problem is) not going to be solved overnight, or in a matter of months or years. It’s truly going to be an evolution.”
Cathryn Lai, vice president of products and strategy for Scientific Games, said millennials have been a hot topic for the last four or five years, but noted that they must be viewed cautiously. They should currently be looked at as incremental revenue and not in the same sense as traditional slot customers. Millennials might bring in less revenue but might otherwise have never played before.
“I think understanding how we measure the success of engaging this new demographic is also important, because I think a lot of these skill-based games will never perform as well as the mass-model type games,” Lai said.
Julia Boguslawski, executive vice president of investor relations and chief marketing officer for AGS, said it’s important to note that tastes evolve over time, and cited herself as an example. She liked beer in her 20s and wine in her 30s, she said, and, likewise, had a couple of player cards in her 20s – and a couple of dozen in her 30s.
“I have more disposable income, and I gamble more,” Boguslawski said.
She pointed out the need for better communication and a greater focus on marketing to the right places.
“We need to be mindful of cabinet design and how we market to them, but a great game is a great game and that has resonated throughout generations,” Boguslawski said. “A lot of times it is about the generation getting a little older and having the income. We do think a little too much emphasis has been put on millennials. They will come around, as (other) generations have. But we still need to be sure that we are leveraging technology.
“iPhones have a certain vibrancy on the screen and a lot of touch features that people are used to. We should make sure our hardware follows suit.”
Boguslawski pointed out that the look and feel of the game is important to millennials and that they are interested in payment methods like PayPal and Venmo, the digital wallet.
“They can use (cashless) in every other industry, and it makes sense they should be able to use it in gaming,” Boguslawski said.
Lai said cashless options will be a greater emphasis in the future, especially for millennials, even though some on the panel suggested that players aren’t ready for it and still prefer to use cash.
“If you look at any other commerce industry, there are non-cash payment solutions everywhere,” Lai said. “I think for us to be successful in this cashless arena, we have to find a solution that’s friction-free for the player… something that doesn’t require too much effort for them to use.
“It has to be fully integrated and unified. The real value is how many steps does it take to find a wallet… I think that will be the key to success in trying to get cashless adopted.”
What’s also important for millennials and other players, Boguslawski said, is a USB smartphone charger, which some manufacturers are now beginning to integrate into their cabinets.
“If you want people to sit at a slot machine for a while,” she said, “they need to be able to charge their phones.”
