Insight
Olympic Entertainment Group COREY PLUMMER
Champion, able to migrate customers from marketplace to marketplace. Many operators offer gaming halls focused on locals with a distribution of locations and a small number of machines per site.
However, to be a multi-state operator it is very difficult to migrate a customer from your arcade in one country to an arcade in another country. Our business model enables us to migrate customers between geographies, which plays into our desire to be a leading operator in multiple jurisdictions within Europe.
What does a European Champion look like?
A European Champion is able to offer diverse experiences in different places because they can provide the complete range of services to guests. We have the hotels, gaming products, restaurants and seasonality to present a different type of experience within Europe.
A European Champion is a well diversified business in terms of geography, it is flexible and able to understand how complementary products work together; casino-style slot machines, live table games, food and beverage, loyalty programmes etc. Olympic is able to migrate experiences on a seasonal and events basis. Our customers can travel between capital city locations, enjoy a concert or basketball game and stay in our hotel rooms, play in our casinos, with our hosts arranging all aspects of those experiences - that’s unique in Europe.
We can marry retail and digital experiences for customers within our local bases. In winter, we can fly customers to Malta to fish on the Mediterranean. We run large tournaments, recently hosting the Kings of Tallinn poker tournament in February, featuring participants from 23 countries. We are developing relationships with stars of the poker world, with celebrity ambassadors from sport, film and music - and you can’t do that just running a gaming hall. My years of international experience and past successes in Europe help drive these efforts at Olympic.
Are Europeans willing to travel to a destination resort?
Established European operators are very quick to tell you “this isn’t Vegas, this isn’t Macau,” in the belief that such plans won’t work. We are taking the opposite approach, asking how can we make this model work country by country. No one can tell me that Europeans don’t want to eat great food, engage with amazing entertainment, have a fabulous night out and enjoy new experiences. Other people in our industry just haven’t figured out how to package that in such a way that it makes sense for Europeans. I believe it will work - it just needs to be different.
If you are trying to emulate Las Vegas, I agree - that won’t work.
P42 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
“A European Champion is able to offer diverse experiences in different places because they can provide the complete range of services to guests. We have the hotels, gaming products, restaurants and seasonality to present a different type of experience within Europe.” Corey Plummer, CEO, Olympic Entertainment Group
Part of the appeal of Vegas is its sheer scale, one massive location after another forming the Strip. For a one-off location to have that kind of appeal - at scale - would be very difficult in Europe. If you build a 5,000 room hotel anywhere in Europe it’s going to be empty. It’s not the way things work here. You have to consider where you are and adapt to that place. I absolutely believe the ‘idea’ can work in Europe. Olympic is doing it right now in its sports bars, casinos and hotels.
How long have you been appraising the European market?
I’ve been looking in earnest at Europe for about 10 years. Olympic is the third gaming company I have been involved in acquiring in the last two years. Tat’s more than 1 billion euros of enterprise value. Early on, I believed there were multiple opportunities arising from the financial crisis to create new business models in Europe by exploiting capital in new ways.
Te financial crisis was an opportunity to expand having lost a large slice of the existing customer base. I believed this was the time to transition the business model to one that’s less gaming focused.
I have met a great number of naysayers who tell me “that won’t work in Europe.” When I first came to the UK people told me that celebrity chefs in UK casinos would never work. Ignoring that advice, we transformed a small break-even environment in Nottingham with a Marco Pierre White restaurant that subsequently became one of the most successful venues outside of London. We repeated that with the James Martin restaurant at 235 in Manchester. I opened the Carlsberg Sports Bar in London. People want to eat and they like celebrities - that’s just the mentality of people.
If you build a great sports bar, people will come. If you create a great steakhouse with a wine bar where people can socialise, they will come. If you add a great meeting and convention space and sell and service it properly – guess what? Tat type of experience is limited in Europe, but it exists in other places and it’s very successful. Te key is execution. I always say to my teams, ”never hire a vegetarian to run your steak house”.
I watched a programme recently on the BBC called ‘Inside the Factory,’ which was about making mayonnaise. Te reporter visited an innovation lab where they were trying to make a
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