same size profitability wise. Are we a technology company? We have a thousand technologies now. Are we a physical gaming company? We have an extensive footprint. We are both. If we can carry out the mission, we have less friction points.
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However, the friction points are there. We have all these companies that are not completely integrated working on entrepreneurial things to achieve something that has never been done before. I believe that friction point is much less than the stance of ‘that’s not our business, I’m not doing that’. We want to become a gaming company that cares about your experience whilst you are in our land-based casinos and when you’re not.
How can you expand so quickly and remain profitable when many of the land-based assets you’re acquiring are a little ‘stressed’?
4
We have a great team of turnaround managers that I have worked with for a long time that understand how to optimise a tired older casino and make it hum. My conception of our company is that we have two engines that are running strong and generating profits, which we can then invest in a growth engine. Tat’s challenging, but I think it’s more challenging to hit your growth numbers every day because you need to tap the market all the time. We don’t have to do that. We have a profitable existing business whilst getting to grow the future. It’s not a challenge, but an opportunity.
Are there still holes in your technology portfolio that you’re looking to fill - and in what areas is there still opportunity to solidify your offer?
Yes. Tere are a few different areas of focus for us. We believe that we have a kernel of sports betting technology, iGaming, FTP, DFS. We are good on those, but there are other forms of gaming. We believe that whilst there are all these interactive ways to game, technology reduces the barriers between them. It’s going to and is converging.
Te varying gaming spaces all have their own strengths and weaknesses, but we believe that we can add other elements to bring those strengths together and address the weaknesses. We are still looking at other complementary businesses and assets that will supplement our customer experience and acquisition. Tose are our two ultimate long-term margins.
Harrah’s customer loyalty programme, Total Gold, revolutionised the way that casinos interacted with players in the late 1990s and changed the fortunes of the company and the way every casino marketed itself into the future. Does the combination of all the elements you’re gathering into a singular brand, that’s rapidly expanding its footprint by integrating its own technology across all aspects of the business - is this another game- changing moment?
I hope so. Mining your customer interaction data as a multi-property company with a big footprint makes a lot of sense. Caesars and Harrah’s invented it, others have followed and B2B providers will help you achieve it. But if you think about the next level, gaming is not limited
7 April 13
April 1
June 4
June 30 June January October 18 November 23 December
Bally’s 12 month timeline
Purchases Bally's Brand from Caesars.
Financial terms not disclosed.
Bally's Atlantic City Hotel & Casino, New Jersey. $25 million.
Eldorado Shreveport, Louisiana. $140 million.
Announcement to construct and operate gaming facility, Pennsylvania. $120 million.
8
February 23
March 24 March SportCaller. Financial terms not disclosed.
Monkey Knife Fight. $40 million.
Selected as a finalist in bid to develop and operate casino resort, Virginia.
$650 million if successful.
MontBleu Resort Casino & Spa, Nevada.
Financial terms not disclosed.
Tropicana Las Vegas, Nevada. $308 million.
Bet.Works. $125 million
Tropicana Evansville Casino, Indiana. $140 million.
Gamesys combination announcement. Estimates suggest $2.7 billion. TBC Q4 2021.
13 July 12 August
Association of Volleyball Professionals.
Financial terms not disclosed. Telescope.
Financial terms not disclosed.
to the casino, and your customer data isn’t limited to the time you are sitting at tables or slot machines.
When you think about combining that data with the data sets that come off sports media, FTP gaming interactions etc., there are so many interactions that you can combine more share of time and wallet to build better user experiences. It’s interesting how casino companies hire third- party companies for data all the time, the same way old-line businesses outsourced credit checks. Tat’s your data! Why outsource it to anybody?
Casinos provide marketers casino credit. A casino will take a chance on the customer, but if they don’t pay you back, they are on a blacklist. A long time ago, casinos decided to combine that into a database called casino credit which was owned by a third-party, so now you pay a third- party to essentially aggregate casino credit and customer behaviour. But is that the future or the past? I think you know my answer. I don’t want to besmirch a product, particularly one we still use today, but is that the future?
Alternatively, should we buy a product from another third-party company that gives us back our customer data in a process form or should we just capture our customer data, which we do anyway, process it ourselves and compare it to third-party databases and get to the same or better place. When your customer walks in, you should get a stake.
Tird parties will develop B2B products that will engage the most common assets to the largest customer base. But we don’t have common assets. We only have the assets we have. We should mine our customer data to create the most wonderful experiences with our assets. It’s just a different attitude, and this is the conversation that we started the interview with: is it opportunism, strategy, or both? I don’t think there is opportunism without strategy. Tere isn’t innovation without a vision.
The past couple of years has seen Steve Wynn removed from the board, the passing of Sheldon Adelson, Stanley Ho, Georges Tranchant and Sol Kerzner. Having been an industry guided by such potent personalities for the best part of half a century and more, is it fair to say the new reality is one in which investment funds determine the trajectory of the business from this period forward?
Gaming isn’t a space that has been heavily invest fund focused. It has mostly been public companies or entrepreneurs who have pushed it forward historically. I don’t think the empire building days are ever over, but the nature of the empires being built are different. Tere will always be empires and optimisation.
We have a general belief that the injection of technology into gaming is a great thing and will create better customer experiences, expand the market, and allow for things that people haven’t even imagined yet. We are not even close to the possibilities, or even imagining the possibilities. I’m excited for gaming. It speaks to people in a very visceral and instinctive level. Te empires of the future are going to look different, and they will be bigger than ever.
WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS P77
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