iGaming, Cryptocurrency, and NFTs Critical to Casino Industry’s Post-Pandemic Future

Info-Tech’s findings reveal that the casino industry is at the precipice of significant change. Operators need to consider what is happening in the external environment that directly influences what changes will need to be made within the four walls of the casino.

“Many casinos are going through a slow rate of progress and pace of change,” says Larry Fretz, vice president of Gaming and Hospitality Research at Info-Tech Research Group. “Since many casinos are faced with the challenges of the pandemic and meeting the expectations of consumers, the objective is for operators to accomplish the Casino Floor of the Future, taking advantage of the many opportunities that could increase revenue and maximize share of wallet.”

Casino-as-a-Platform Six Trends (CNW Group/Info-Tech Research Group)

The new report details three external environments that have a direct influence on casinos. These changes are:

1. Demographic Transition – Operators have an eye on the future, and the future lies with the younger demographics. With Gen X and Baby Boomers aging out, casinos must consider a different audience, enhancing the land-based casino gaming experience to sway this new generation of customers. Strategically planning and investing in young bettors, their expectations, and their needs is an advantageous future-forward approach.
   
   
2. Digital Consumer Lifestyle – Sports betting and iGaming are incredibly important attributes to the decisions casinos should make around players and assets. This evidential increase in revenue has helped casinos get through the pandemic. Operators must make sure they provide an omnichannel experience that factors in these revenue streams.
   
   
3. Health and Safety Habits – Casino operators should consider high-tech/low-touch solutions, with manufacturers becoming increasingly focused on innovating products and platforms for the health and safety mindset. In the reopening phase, there was an emphasis on barriers, social distancing, and cleaning investments. Now, the emergence of higher-end technology-related innovations has induced the need and desire for digital transformation and adoption.

“With digital transformation in mind, casinos must understand what innovative products and solutions are on the horizon that will allow for the expansion of operations and survival of the industry,” explains Fretz. “It is the role of IT to help their casino adopt technologies with an eye to long-term technical and business impacts.”

Six Enabling Trends From Info-Tech’s Casino-as-a-Platform Report:

As casinos incorporate new technological innovations, they must remember that hospitality has always been, and will always be, about the people. A casino-as-a-platform strategy begins with the operator’s needs but ends with the creation and enhancement of a player-centric experience.

Info-Tech recommends focusing on an analyst’s investigation of strategic foresight. This methodology helps the IT department and the business process what is happening in the organization’s external environment to guide ideation and opportunity identification.

As a methodology, strategic foresight flows from the identification of signals to clustering the signals together to form trends and uncover what is driving the trends in determining which strategic initiatives are most likely to lead to success on an industry level.

The following six trends outlined in Info-Tech’s report should be top of mind for IT leaders in the casino and gaming industry as they navigate the new landscape:

1. Brick & Click – The integration of mobile will steer casinos toward an omnichannel approach that opens the doors for an integrated and holistic iGaming and Sports Betting experience. Now is the time to look more seriously at diversifying into the digital world for relevancy, comparative strength, revenue growth, and resiliency.
   
   
2. Intangible Value Creation – Cryptocurrency and NFTs enable the play-to-earn model, a modern crypto approach that can be leveraged to incentivize play on the casino floor. With casinos hosting gift days and creating unique and collectible chips and cards, NFTs could be the next iteration of this concept. For this to work, casinos and game makers must consider designing and implementing a blockchain-powered gaming machine that enables the play-to-earn model, improving loyalty and retention, increasing time-on-device, and growing revenue.
   
   
3. Hyper-Personalization 2.0 – Casino marketing is antiquated. It has historically focused on a direct-mail approach, commonly sending promotions and bonuses via email or printed materials weeks after the player has already left the floor. Casinos should be leveraging behavioral attributes and real-time data to tailor offer messages in the moment.
   
   
4. Smart Pit – In terms of features and improvements, slot machines have received more attention, boasting rich data sets to analyze, 4K resolution, 4D immersion, and large signage. Table games have become the outlaw, excluded from the benefits of technological innovation because of many operators’ slow pace of change. Due to the impacts of the pandemic, more and more casinos have started to embrace the elements of the Smart Pit, but it still needs to gain more traction in the industry.
   
   
5. Consumer Adaptive – Unconventionally, the casino floor is beginning to adapt to the player and their desire for convenience through technology. Casinos need to meet consumer tech expectations and expand options while reducing physical touchpoints, hardware, and interfaces.
   
   
6. Ready Player Z – The pandemic heightened the millennial-to-Gen-Z cultural transition. The industry is exploring what investments will successfully draw in this sociable and experience-loving demographic of the future.

For each of the trends presented, the report provides case studies and actionable recommendations that IT leaders in the gaming and casino industry can implement immediately.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group