The headline was ominous: “Has Las Vegas pushed its luck too far?” Truthfully, it was nothing that our industry had not been whispering internally for years; but, for God sake, this was NOT something the whole world should know.
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In our Wall-Street-fueled universe of investment-grade “gaming”, there are some things that should remain only whispers inside the industry; and some things that should remain completely unspoken. Corporate bankruptcies. Bedbugs. Mobsters. Union busting. Flaws in slot machines random number generators. Health code violations. Successful cheats. And, especially, that our slot machines might be losing their appeal.
This new generation, the largest in the history of the world, clearly doesn’t have their parents’ and grandparents’ propensity for gambling. Now there was major international pop-culture media announcing that these kids are more interested in bars, music, and entertainment. A generation raised in the high-tech world of gadgetry could not have the attention span to gamble like their greyed elders.
Internally and in our trade associations, the search for solutions never slowed; but, this was different. This was the first time the mainstream media had picked up on our secret anxiety. Millions of people now knew our secret terrors as they heard, “A new breed of visitor is showing up (in Vegas) … to enjoy the good rooms, food, and shows but ―and this is where it hurt― not to gamble.”
Some operators, marketers, and manufactures argue that this is the single greatest challenge in the storied history of our industry. If casinos cannot find a way to lure this young generation to the gaming floor, it would be the end of the gaming industry.
The world-changing media-reveal continued by noting that the older generation of heavy gamblers was dying off but the number of visitors to Vegas was not on the decline. Clearly, the solution had to be somewhere other than slots and tables. There was even a successful move to bring in a professional sports team.
Oh, oh… wait. This was the June 20, 1955 issue of Life Magazine with its cover story “Las Vegas—Is Boom Overextended?”. The new generation was baby boomers, not millennials. Their high-tech gadgetry was transistor radios and that new-fangled television set. The professional sports team was the Las Vegas Wranglers.
That Chicken-Little-sky-is-falling foreboding that was forecasted 62 years ago sounds eerily like this year’s hand-wringing despair over the millennial generation. This time, however, our industry has become so large and so public that regulators, manufactures, and lawmakers have joined operators in the panic.
To attract these millennials, a flurry of skill games, interactive games, mobile-on-premises games, and internet games have joined the arsenal of over-priced restaurants, mind-boggling entertainment tickets (patrons pay more than $1,000 per seat to see Britney Spears close up in Vegas), and other non-gaming revenue streams including trendy velvet-rope-entrance bars. Six of the top ten grossing bars in the United States are in Las Vegas; and two of those are located in one money-losing casino property. The Millennials are coming.
The industry adapted to the Baby Boomer generation, quite well. The stepper-reel slot machines of 1955 only vaguely resemble today’s video-touch-screen slots. Slot machine giant IGT didn’t even exist for another 20 years. The 1955 newly-opening Dunes Hotel and Casino was packed with a mass of 120 slot machines (compared to 1,925 slot machines and 206 table games at the Bellagio, today on the old Dunes site). Bonus rounds and wide-area progressives were decades away from introduction.
What we have learned (or SHOULD have learned) in these six decades is that the demographic / psychographic profile of gamblers is distinctively different from the profile of 18 to 29-year-olds. More than age differential, there are the issues of disposable income, recreational choices, and general priorities. If I owned a high-energy dance club, I probably would not wonder why there were no 65-year-olds waiting in line for a bottle service; likewise, it is just as silly of me to expect the EDM patrons to spend money at slot machines.
Life Magazine was correct; the sex-drugs-and-rock-&-roll generation was not going into the casino… at least not at 28 years old. Thirty-five years later, it was a different story; the former flower children were now the core gamblers.
If history and data hold true, the 28-year-old millennials won’t be flocking to our casinos for another 25 years.
Yes, we need to continue to develop games that appeal to a contemporary player base. Yes, there are more millennials than there were baby boomers.
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But we have a quarter of a century before we can reasonably expect them to show up at the casino. In the meantime, they have other things to do with what little money they have; and there are lots of people in the generations between baby boomers and millennials who DO meet the demographic; AND there are lots of boomers left.
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It is correct, millennials are NOT flocking to casinos; nor should anyone with a grasp on reality expect them to… or spend a lot of money to attract them. They are not coming for 25 years; then… look out.