Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | May 2008 18 Data Analysis “If you have a look at the statistical data on some of the key questions that every casino executive asks about the business, it’s stacked four inches high. Without data visualisation it would either take you a long time to come to useful conclusions or you might not get there at all,” says Bally Technologies Senior Vice President of Strategy & Business Development Bruce Rowe. Fast results The common question:‘Do people like to sit next to each other if they don’t know each other?’can be dealt with“in less than a minute” using data visualisation, says Mr Rowe. “With Bally BIS we can create AVI files visualising different times of day. Let’s take as an example a casino floor at quarter to four in the morning on a Sunday. At this time customers have a choice of any game on the floor to play.Which games have they chosen first? “When you run the visualisation you can see straight away it’s the games on the end. By looking at one type of game placed both at the end of a bank and in the middle of a bank and then analysing play levels you can seek to improve the revenue levels of themiddle games by increasing their attractiveness to players through things such as increasing the Hold percentage.” Sample visualisation of a slot floor Sample Bally Visual Analysis of slot rated coin in revenue “If we then run the visualisation for a longer period we can see this behaviour is consistent over time.You’rewatching this happening but you’re not looking at any data.You’re looking at a visualisation of the data, and it’s confirming that at any time of day the end of the bank typically gets occupied,” says Mr Rowe. “If you have a choice of laying out games in an even number or an odd number, which one will make more money? It’s the odd number layout. Why? Because it creates more private spaces than an even number of games,” explains Mr Rowe. “When you go to an airport, what’s the first thing you do when you sit in a chair? You put your briefcase on the left seat and your coat on the right.People don’t want to be near people that they don’t know. It’s just human behaviour. It’s not that different with slots. Human nature “You always have more yield on a bank that’s made up of three games than a bank made up of four games if you accept those principles of human behaviour. You can see that with visualisation without having to examine any other data,”he adds. There are lots of other questions, however,where the answers are not so well known, even by the professionals. Where, for example, do women under 30 like to sit when playing slots? Who’s visiting the casino at 4am? Which postal districts are your most profitable players coming from? These questions and many others are real examples of issues tackled by Bally Business Intelligence Solutions. Sample of Bally Visual Analysis of time played by females in a slots lounge Men versus women In one case study, casino managers notice from reports that two adjacent banks of games on the inside of a slot cluster were performing well, but they weren’t sure why. When they used Bally’s animated visualisation on activity they noticed that players‘flip flopped’from one bank to the other.When they ran a visualisation on who was playing, they found women under 30 played on one side, and men over 55 on the other side, with each group effectively creating their own ‘territory’ Because of this insight, the operator created a special area for women under 30, and direct mail marketing was focused on this customer group to publicise the fact. Within a year, this simple