The one thing that has surprised many longtime American gambling industry experts more than the rapid legalisation of sports betting – three dozen states have authorised it since a US Supreme Court ruling opened the door in May 2018 – has been the extreme sluggishness in terms of the growth of its online casino gaming counterpart.
That’s even though the latter form of legal gambling has been around longer, once the “gambling unicorn” that is Nevada is set aside.
In the fall of 2013, both Delaware and New Jersey launched so-called igaming. The online gambling expansion allows adult residents and visitors to play virtual versions of popular casino games from slot machines to blackjack to roulette. And, while a retail casino customer can walk in off the street and make a significant wager without management having any idea of who they are, gaming operators know all about their online customers from the day they first sign up.
Online gambling expansion in the US has been a tough nut to crack. The topic was front and centre at last week’s Racing and Gaming Conference at Saratoga, New York. Industry expert and Spectrum Gaming Group senior advisor Michael Pollock said during the “Casinos, Igaming and Sports Betting” panel discussion that, in the first year of online casino play, Tropicana Atlantic City officials noted 60% of their mobile signup customers were not in their electronic database.
Few steady gamblers resist the siren call of free perks for using customer loyalty cards at casinos. So what Pollock said meant that the online offering simply wasn’t shifting a “regular” from the casino site to the comfort of their living room couch.
Even more striking, he noted, was that at the same time, Caesars reported finding 80% of its online customer signups were not previously “in their system”. Golden Nugget said it had an 89% new customer rate. Pollock noted about 11% of online casino players are “double-dippers” who play in person and online. But many are customers who were found not to have visited the casino property in quite a while.
“People that like to gamble also like to be in social settings,” Pollock said, “and I don’t think gambling in their bathrobe at night is going to be enough for them.”
That means that, armed with a treasure trove of information on consumers, operators will find some who presumably could – with the right promotion – be enticed to visit the brick-and-mortar property.
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