To woo Gen Y crowd, casinos adding X-factor
Tattoo shops and MMA among lures for new gamblers
BOSTON — Casinos worried that millennials aren’t getting into traditional gambling like their parents and grandparents are bringing in tattoo studios, mixed martial arts competitions and other offbeat attractions to draw in a younger clientele.
In New England, Connecticut’s Foxwoods is remaking one of its gambling floors as a hip, fun scene in the sprawling 30-year-old casino complex.
The casino floor bar was redone in January to include a stage where a mostly female ensemble covers pop songs. Just off the gambling floor, a swank new tattoo studio-slash-fashion retailer opened in the fall, not far from where Shrine, the casino’s popular nightclub, is increasingly booking top electronic dance acts like deadmau5 and Tiesto.
“It’s kind of like the party place,” said CEO Felix Rappaport. “It’s really energized the casino floor.”
In Rhode Island, Twin River Casino removed 274 slot machines in December to make way for more table games favored by younger gamblers. It’s also been hosting mixed martial arts competitions at its event center.
Casinos slow to pivot to millennials’ preferences do so at their own risk, warned Steven Norton, a casino consultant based in Illinois.
Older members of that demographic are in their 30s, meaning they’re entering their prime earning and spending years, he said. That’s critical for an industry whose customers have historically been in their 40s and over.
“You want to develop good customers now so that we don’t become the horse racing industry of the future, where all of our people have died off and we don’t have any new blood coming in,” Norton said.
It’s too soon to determine whether any of those efforts will translate to sus- tained success with millennials, casino operators said.
But market research suggests new thinking is necessary, said Michael Mathis, president of MGM Springfield, a resort casino expected to open in Massachusetts in late 2018.
He pointed to a 2015 article by the Washington, D.C.-based Marketing Research Association that suggests current versions of slot machines are “widely viewed” by millennials as “antisocial, non-intuitive and generally boring.”
To address the slot machine apathy, casinos in past years updated machines with more pop culture references. They also introduced electronic version of popular table games.
The newest trend? Electronic table games that feature live dealers.
But, at Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun, general manager Ray Pineault cautioned that the need to address the younger generation has to be balanced.
“You can’t overemphasize millennials to the detriment of your other customers,” he said.