Inside Asian Gaming

October 2015 inside asian gaming 29 Online Gaming DoubleDown Casino, a highly successful social games platform offered by International Game Technology (IGT). Other operators—citing concerns over cost, limited returns, potential cannibalization of the land- based player base, lack of buy-in from the brick-and-mortar operations team and so on—have decided the best approach is no approach at all and steer clear of the social gaming scene, at least for now. However, there is a growing group of land-based casino operators that have decided the best approach is to establish their own social casino brand and platform. Among the companies that have taken this step are Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, Empire City Casino in New York, Thunder Valley Casino Resort in California, and Dover Downs Hotel & Casino in Delaware, just to name a few. For brick-and- mortar operators looking to follow in these properties’ footsteps, there is an early and vital strategic decision that must be made—will the new social gaming entity be primarily used as a marketing and loyalty tool with the ultimate goal of bringing more patronage to land-based facilities, or as a standalone enterprise designed to generate real- money revenue from the highly-competitive social games space? Indeed, this was the question faced by two companies that jumped early into the social gaming marketplace—American Casino & Entertainment Properties, the operator of The Stratosphere Casino, Hotel & Tower, Aquarius Casino Resort and two Arizona Charlie’s properties, all based in Nevada; and Caesars Interactive Entertainment, a publically-owned and independently operated affiliate of Caesars Entertainment Corporation, the $7.5 billion brick- and-mortar casino company. Executives from both these companies discussed the paths they took and shared the lessons they learned along the way at a social casino session held at the Casino Marketing & Technology Conference, which took place in July at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. MARKETING EXERCISE American Casino & Entertainment Properties (ACEP) opted for the marketing and loyalty approach to social casino gaming, but it was not a decision they came to lightly or easily, according to Alec Driscoll, director of gaming development for ACEP. “When we decided to launch a social gaming site back in 2011… we quickly realized we needed to become better educated,” Mr Driscoll said. “So over the next 18 months we met with a lot of external companies. We talked to IGT, Bally, the various European online gaming providers… we kind of kicked a lot of tires. We also visited a lot of social gaming sites, there is really no better way to get educated than to go to any of the sites and just beat them up; download the apps and see what everyone is offering.” ACEP also held a series of internal discussions and meetings with teams from each of the brick-and-mortar properties to get their views on what they wanted from a social gaming perspective. “We met with them to establish some parameters and goals,” Mr Driscoll said. “We have three different patron models with our land-based properties— locals with Arizona Charlie’s, tourists with The Stratosphere and a combination of both with Aquarius—and each had a different goal with social gaming. One of the GMs just wanted higher head count in the building and thought [social gaming] was a good vehicle for that. Some were looking for higher yield patrons; others for more diverse types of patrons. All were looking for us to provide insight on how to convert social players to websites or buildings.” What became quickly apparent to Mr Driscoll and other ACEP executives was that there was no appetite to become a big player in the for-money social games or online casino space. “One of the things we really decided to steer clear of was chasing the for-money online business as it became legal state to state,” Mr Driscoll said. “We did not want to chase it and end up putting shops in each of these jurisdictions. In the end we decided to go for a more channel approach to social—to appeal to our existing and known players and to prospect for new local players to go to our properties.” That decision made, ACEP decided it was not economically worthwhile to build their own social casino platform and games from scratch, so they went the white label route. “From a tech standpoint, I think it is smart to own whatever aspects of the social casino platform you can,” Mr Driscoll said. “But the reality is that probably not everyone in this industry is going to build a robust online gaming platform and do it to specs and regulatory approval. For us speed to market was everything, so we thought it was much easier to just white label some existing technology.” To that end, ACEP contracted with then-Amaya Poker and unveiled its acePLAYpoker.com social poker site in 2013. When the company decided to expand its online game offerings to become a full social casino site, it did so with technology and products from Bally, which is now part of Scientific Games. Thus far, ACEP has been very pleased with its social gaming International Game Technology’s DoubleDown Casino is one of the world’s leading social casino sites, and is offered by IGT to operators looking for easy entry into the social games space. American Casino & Entertainment Properties promotes its social casino offerings on all established marketing channels, including the websites for its land-based properties.