By Mark Gruetze, Trib Live
America’s biggest generation yet will succeed baby boomers as the primary group of casino customers, but that poses a problem for the gambling industry. Casino floors, in their current form, aren’t much of an attraction among the coveted millennial segment.
Adult millennials, those 21 to 34 years old, find slot machines boring and would rather go to a nightclub than sit at a blackjack table, studies show. While many have the travel budget and sense of adventure commonly associated with gambling, most prefer to spend their trips exploring a city or visiting theme parks.
“The rise of millennials will not be like previous generational shifts,” says Michael Pollock, managing director of Spectrum Gaming Group, a gaming-research company with affiliates around the world. “This one will be particularly massive.” Casino executives, game manufacturers and gambling regulators all play a role in helping the industry adapt for next generation of gamblers, he says.
Pollock spoke at a webinar focusing on the long-range impact of millennials on casinos. Demographics of the millennial generation explain why casinos — and many other industries — concentrate so much on appealing to that age group:
Millennials account for about a third of the U.S. population. Although the date range defining the generation varies among studies, about 84 million Americans were born between 1980 and 1997. The Baby Boomer generation, which accounts for the largest portion of current casino visitors, totaled 78 million.
Millennials are the most educated generation in history. They’re also the most tech-savvy, says the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers.
Millennials are more likely to take leisure trips than other generations, according to the annual Portrait of American Travelers.
Millennials spend $1.3 trillion a year, says the Boston Consulting Group.
“Millennials’ gambling behavior is fundamentally different from previous generations’” says Gene Johnson, Spectrum’s senior vice president for market research. “This is the first generation to grow up using the Internet, and they have many more choices when it comes to gambling.”
Those outlets include Daily Fantasy Sports and e-sports. Players of daily fantasy sports spend an average of $465 a year per person, Johnson says. He adds that millennials are beginning to wager on e-sports, which are team competitions in multiplayer online battle arena games such as League of Legends, Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) and Call of Duty. ESPN reported that the League of Legends Championship sold out the 40,000-seat World Cup Stadium in Seoul in 2014 and attracted an online audience of 27 million. That was second to the 112 million who watched the NFL Super Bowl but more than the TV viewership for the final round of the Masters golf tournament, the NBA finals, baseball’s World Series or hockey’s Stanley Cup Final.
Millennials will become the driving force in leisure travel in the next three to five years, says Peter Yesawich, vice chairman of MMGY Global, a travel and entertainment marketing service firm that compiles an annual report titled “Portrait of America Travelers.” However, casino gambling ranks low among their preferred activities.
Asked to rank important attributes of a vacation, 70 percent of millennials who are frequent travelers listed the opportunity to try new or different cuisine, 62 percent cited a theme park and 59 percent said outdoor adventure. Casino gambling was important to 38 percent.
Yesawich suggests that casinos not focus so much on millennials that other customers get overlooked. “An experience within an experience,” with a separate area offering games and amenities appealing to younger gamblers, might be an alternative, he says.
Johnson says the development of skill-based games markedly different from traditional slots could be an answer. For example, one manufacturer offers a slot machine that looks like a first-person shooter game, including an easy chair and 52-inch flat-screen display.
Traditional slots pay off exclusively on luck. Nevada and New Jersey have approved games in which players can qualify for higher payouts based on skill, whether at an arcade style game or something as simple as a free-throw shooting contest. Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering a bill allowing skill-based games.
Game offerings, regulatory changes and casino design are among the issues the industry faces in attracting new gamblers.
“You cannot be complacent when it comes to this generation,” Pollock says. “You cannot simply say ‘This is what worked in the past.’ ”
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