NIGA panel: Table games below $25 will be disbanded long term
Industry veterans Ari Mizrachi, John Connelly, Lon ODonnell and Roger Snow were front and centre at the 'Future of table games' education session at the Wednesday on NIGA.
Gambling Insider was in attendance as Connelly, Global CEO, Interblock, ODonnell, Director of Gaming Operations, Aruze Gaming and Snow, SVP, Light & Wonder, were part of a panel moderated by Mizrachi, SVP and Head of North America Business at Tangam Systems.
Plenty of the discussion surrounded house advantage/edge and how to increase the success of table games, especially as slots generate such a higher level of revenue within the gaming industry.
An early question was whether table games should implement forced ways for players to bet, guaranteeing a greater house advantage, or whether offering players a greater number of options would be more beneficial.
Connelly said: “I don’t believe in forcing players to bet a certain way – three zeros on a roulette table is a poor man’s innovation.
“Technology now allows us to go faster and table games were emphatically lagging behind slots. But we’re catching up.
“How many people walk past a casino floor and don’t play on it? Tons. Why? Because we hadn’t created an environment for it – but we are now increasing social aspects of the environment, attracting players differently rather than just increasing house advantage.”
“Piggybacking” on this point, Snow added: “When we talk about millennials, how do we get them on the floor? The number one table game played by them is roulette.
“It’s one of the oldest games but you can play this socially; the same applies to craps.”
Connelly went on to discuss research that suggests anything below a $25 table game will be disbanded long term, as these games simply lose money for tribes and casinos.
The Covid-19 pandemic, the Interblock CEO said, provided evidence that increasing the minimum bet size does not lose players as was previously feared, while ETGs were put forward as the ‘winners’ of pandemic-era gambling (by Connelly’s fellow panelist, ODonnell, in fact).
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