Sports betting will be an overriding theme at this year’s Global Gaming Expo, and JCM Global’s booth on the tradeshow floor will resemble a sports book.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May knocked down the federal ban on sports betting, there’s been a rush towards implementing sports wagering in states across the country.
“At the core of most good brick-and-mortar sports books are displays, and our display business and large-format high-definition LED display panels are very good for us,” said Tom Nieman, vice president of global marketing for JCM. “The interest level has been sky-high in closing deals as people are preparing space. It seems to be more multipurpose. A sports book at one point could turn into a nightclub at night and these screens have this great flexibility with a very sophisticated system. You can put up live sports content and odds. Everything is crystal clear and very readable, and the perfect solution for most sports books.”
In its booth, JCM plans to replicate a large sports book wagering environment with a 58-panel 1.6-millimeter pitch, which relates to resolution, Nieman said.
“The pitch relates to how crisp the picture is, and 1.6 is incredible,” Nieman said. “Everybody talks about 2k and 4k and with 1.6 millimeter you can generate 8k resolution. It’s beautiful.”
Fifty-eight panels is equal to 42 square meters of surface. The booth will show live channels of sporting events and corresponding odds, Nieman said. It can be reconfigured for six screens or four screens and be enabled for a large screen.
“They can be reconfigured constantly to feature a game or put more displays up there,” Nieman said. “The flexibility of these displays is amazing, and the software that runs them is incredibly detailed and controllable. It will have the look and feel of your favorite sportsbook.”
Each screen is 2.5-meters tall and seven meters wide, Nieman said.
“They are like Tinker Toys,” Nieman said. “They come in 500-centimeter squares, and they just lock together and plug into each other. You can build it as large and whatever shape you want. That’s what makes them perfect for any application for sports books, nightclubs or bingo parlors and entertainment venues. These screens are incredible.”
JCM has been selling screens for the last decade, and they’ve been getting bigger, Nieman said. They now offer exterior screens and have installed them for tribal casinos in Oklahoma.
JCM’s PixelPro Max displays have HD and UHD frameless LED screens with industry-leading color contrasts allowing spectacular images and video on a curved or flat wall, indoors and outdoors, giving the ultimate in flexibility to unleash creativity in the sports book and anywhere and everywhere across the entire property, Nieman said.
“The durability, the brilliance, and the picture are just stunning,” Nieman said. “We have 10 different LED screens in various shapes and sizes. We have some in cubes and strips that hang from the ceiling. That is the beauty of these LED panels. You can bend them, curve them, wrap them and do anything you want. That flexibility makes them such a great value for gaming operators.”
JCM sells the hardware, processors, and video players. The technology continues to evolve, and resolution gets better and better, Nieman said.
“It used to be you could see the individual pixels, but it’s not like that anymore,” Nieman said. “It doesn’t generate heat and uses very little energy. They’re environmentally friendly and consumer friendly because of the brilliance of the image coming off them.”
There’s been a lot of interest with states implementing sports betting or considering it, Nieman said. There’s been orders and discussions with operators looking to cover their walls with panels, he said.
The growth of esports will give casinos another application for adding screens.
“Our pipeline for the LED business has never been as full, and the dollar volume is sky high,” Nieman said. “We’re very excited as we go into the last part of 2018, and 2019 should be a monster year for this kind of business.”
