Casino Operations Summit with Lucien Wijsman

Morning, Dan. How are things in Vegas this morning?

Wonderful, Nick. Good morning. Good to see you.

Likewise. Okay, Dan. So just continuing our coverage of the prediction markets, some big news there. On the 17th of March, Arizona's Attorney General filed criminal charges against Kalshi, 20 counts of illegal gambling, including operating an unlicensed sportsbook within the state and for facilitating election wagering, which is explicitly prohibited under Arizona law. So the interesting thing here is that Kalshi was somehow tipped off to the filing and on the 12th of March, attempted to head it off by filing for a temporary restraining order in federal court, arguing that Arizona has no jurisdiction, of course, as they're federally regulated by the CFTC. The federal judge denied their request and agreed to rule further on the matter during a hearing scheduled on April 3rd.

So legal analysts project that the judge is going to adhere to a legal doctrine known as the younger abstention, that was new for me, which holds that federal courts generally should not interfere with ongoing criminal cases at the state level. So Dan, I don't know about you. I was encouraged to see this. Have you picked up any related stories or anything since we last spoke?

Well, just here locally in Nevada, it's personal because Kalshi actually went dark a few days ago for-

How long [inaudible 00:01:38]

... officially for 14 days.

Okay.

The latest ruling by the state court, I think advanced of a first week of May hearing or ruling. So that's another big development here, but it's heating up for sure.

Yeah. Crazy, crazy stuff. So I think we've covered it a lot, so I think we can move on. But yeah, I just thought we'd throw that one out there as it's for sure a big development moving from the civil domain into criminal now. Okay. This month's listener question. Before I hit it, let me say we love to tackle any questions anybody listening may have. So if you have questions about what we're presenting or something you'd like us to present, please drop us an email at reelcast@reelmetrics.com. Again, that's R-E-E-L-C-A-S-T at reelmetrics.com. Our policy is to keep all questions anonymous, so please speak directly and don't worry about us revealing your identity. That is not something we do.

Okay. So this comes from a casino operator in the American Midwest who says, "Hi, guys. I really like it when you tell listeners about the trends real metrics seized in player behavior. Now that 2025 is behind us, did you see anything noteworthy last year that you could share with us?"

So many thanks to the listener for that. My apologies for being a bit data light over the past several episodes. You can blame prediction markets, I guess. So I dove in and looked at a few things. Before I get started, let's just briefly cover how we look at this. So at ReelMetrics, we segment play across three tiers pan-industrially. So that's A players, B players, and C players. The As generally comprise about 5% of the total player population and generate around 40% of all slot revenues. This varies on a venue by venue basis, but I'm giving you the industry numbers here. Then we have our Bs around 15% of players producing half of all revenue, followed by the Cs, which comprises around 80% of players and 10% of revenue.

So if you want a deeper explanation of how we segment, just go to cdcgaming.com/reelmetrics and read the notes on page two of any real hot index that you pick up there. Okay. So there are a number of metrics that we watch pretty closely. These are things like all the averages for number of trips, number of titles per trip, session duration, session wager, average wager, trip wager, loyalty program, retention rates. These are some of the big ones that we really hit. Needless to say, we also are quite focused on each segment's top titles, cabinets, and market baskets.

So Dan, as you know, back in 2022, ReelMetrics published our findings on premium product and cannibalization, that whole thing. And after that, we saw a huge influx of premium product onto North American slot floors. So we look back 10 years, premium floor share was kind of three to 5% range. And these days when we look across our network, it's over 16% nationwide. So we've seen quite a jump there.

And when operators first start this demand balancing, as we call it, they see huge increases in that A segment productivity. And in many cases, we actually see ADT doubling and things of this nature. So with a good amount of that A segment demand balancing in the rearview mirror now, the 2025 story was really about stabilization of that demand. So these players have really ascended to new plateaus where we see the metrics are largely settling. We see growth in the kind of five to 7% range across most metrics. So it's healthy, but it's nothing bonkers that we see with those first efforts go through in demand balancing.

The real story last year was in the B segment where we saw pan-industrially the same thing that we see at individual venues following those demand balancing efforts. And that upper strata of B players start moving into wilder, more expensive product and really intensifying that play. And a lot of them actually going up into the A segment in return for this. And economics, this is known as induced demand is the principle where increments and supply levels of certain goods just increase overall demand levels. And we saw a lot of that in 2025.

So in the B segment, we saw a premium play was up by like 6% for the year, but that translated to an average increase in trip spend over 14%. So when we look at things like this, what we see is there's just a ton of headroom there. So we're really diving into that B segment now and looking for all kinds of demand balancing opportunities. But that was definitely an interesting thing last year.

Now, down in the C segment, we saw healthy demand and curiously a bit of that same induced demand effect that we saw with the B segment. However, I don't put too much stock in that as that C segment demand is really fickle and kind of all over the place often. And also with what we're seeing in like gas prices and travel nightmares and this kind of stuff, I am a little concerned about what we're going to see in that segment moving through 2026. But in terms of core titles then on the product front, the A segment throwing a lot of money at Aristocrat's ultimate fast cash and Spooky Link products with the Bs also hammering Spooky Link, but also IGT's Stink Link, I really like that name, as well as AGS's Fortune Frenzy series.

On the premium side, A segment continues to really hammer those Aristocrat titles like your Dragon Link, your Phoenix Link, Dollar Storm, also really strong in the As with the B segment focusing more on really Dragon Link is a big one there, as well as Light & Wonder's UFL titles, especially that Triple Nova stuff. So Dan, I could obviously slice and dice this for the next couple of hours, but those are kind of really the headlines. So anything in there that shocks, surprises or concerned you, let's say?

No. Not really. I mean, I guess I'm more curious what you think. Do you think maybe that brand extensions are so prevalent now and some of the brands that you mentioned just are all over the place. And frankly, if you're a player, whether you're in A segment, B segment or C segment, if you want to play a new game, for the most part, you're playing some version of those brand extensions simply because that's the new stuff that's coming out. So I'm wondering how much of that is driven by just, you think, familiarity and the fact that the manufacturers are consolidating what they're releasing into fewer and fewer skews.

And then the other thing is, do you think that multi-denom comes into play here? Because now you can really find so many different entry points on all these games that the retail player's able to get in a low entry point on the same machine that your VIP player is able to hammer away at $5 denom.

Yeah. And you do have to be careful with this, obviously. So in some cases, if you can't expand, let's say, that segment of product, then sometimes you do need to back people off with more aggressive price points on it, so there's that. In terms of the series being extended, I mean, if I look at the individual titles, let's say, and I look at Dragon Link, for example, it is still like Happy & Prosperous and Autumn Moon and now I'm drawing a blank. It's the same titles that we see. And I think with Spooky Link, a big part of that I really believe was... It's just a theory on my part. We could have asked Dan Marks with it. I felt that was really kind of more of a premium focus, but they really wanted to launch Baron strongly, but I mean, we're seeing that as well [inaudible 00:10:23]

Yeah. And even Stink Link with IGT, you have I think two or three titles on that family that are resonating, but Stinkin' Rich is a known commodity and has for many years-

For sure.

... but obviously they've innovated all that and kept that familiarity.

Yeah. But to your point, I think that landing on a good solid brand like that and then extending it and extending it. I mean, well, geez, look at what L&W has done with Huff and Pop. It's just every kind of a twist you can get on that. But I mean, at the end of the day, they're extending them because they're resonating and they get those titles out there and they're really hitting hard in the right segments and stuff. So it's really, really good. But just generally, that's what we're seeing.

We see the same thing over and over and over. We go into these venues, we see that there's a real problem. Oftentimes at the very top segments, there's just not enough capacity in the stuff they want to play. We expand that and everything starts to change in terms of how people are playing and stuff. So yeah, just a continuation of some of the stuff that we've seen over recent years. So we're pretty encouraged by it. Everything is still looking pretty healthy and strong with those caveats that I am a little bit worried about some of the macroeconomic variables and how they'll influence this year's numbers, but I haven't seen anything in really a negative territory yet. So that's good.

Okay. Well, Dan, time to introduce today's guest who in addition to being a fellow Leiden resident and ReelCast's first ever guest, he co-hosted three episodes during our fourth season. In addition to being one of the industry's most sought after educators and operational consultants, he's also the owner and organizer of what I regard as Europe's preeminent industry event, the Casino Operations Summit, which is also the focus of today's episode. So the summit this year's event takes place next month from April 21st through 23rd at Hyatt Regency Thessaloniki in Thessaloniki Greece.

I'm referring, of course, to our old friend, Mr. Lucien Wijsman, Lucien, how are things today in the city of discovery here?

You are asking me?

Yeah.

As you does know, we live about 200 meters apart. So I'm guessing it's the same where you are. It was spring started, hence I have to apologize a little bit for my nasal tone. I am seriously affected by hay fever. So yeah, I'm sure you can hear. Other than that, everything is cool.

All right. Very good. So we thought it was a good opportunity since you have the Casino Operations Summit coming up next month that we would put a focus on this and talk about it because it's an event that I truly love. And let's start with its origins. So as many listening know, your original event was known as the Slot Summit, which you launched, I think it was, is it 2011? Was I right on that one?

Yeah. You wrote that and I think you're right. Yes.

In Slovenia, I think it was-

Yes. That is true. That's true.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So maybe start with telling us why you decided to create it and what you felt that the other, let's say European casino events were missing. What niche did you want to fill there?

I have a very disappointing answer. I didn't plan anything. I really remember how this came about. I was in Nova Gorica in Slovenia. They had a beautiful, they still have a beautiful casino there, the Perla Casino. And the general manager and I were standing in... We're talking and were standing in the event's room that they have. And he said, "You could do a fantastic slot academy here." Because I never did a slot summit. I used to do trainings, and this was for 10 to 15 people. And he said, "Here, you could do a fantastic slot academy. You could even do it in more than one language because we have translator boots up there."

I never did this with translation. I never did it for more than 20 people and the room could easily hold 200 people. I said, "Yeah, but I never thought of... And I always do this alone, but then maybe I need other speakers." And he said, "Yeah. So you just invite a couple of other speakers and we bring in some translators." And then one of the Bally in those days representatives was standing there and he looks at me and he said, "Well, if you do that, we'd probably sponsor that." And I thought, "Get out of here." "We would sponsor that."

He said, "Yeah. Put some machines here and..." And that's really how it started. So Slot Academy became Slot Summit. And the first time was indeed in Nova Gorica. I think we had 87 operator delegates in the room and we had like 10 different sponsors, but already Bally was there, IGT was there from the beginning. They've been there every year. So we had a good couple of sponsors. Novomatic was there, Merkur then soon after that came on board. And now this year we have all of them.

So I don't think there is a big supplier in Europe that's not there. Konami, Light & Wonder, Aristocrat, IGT, Merkur, EGT, Novomatic, all the Konami, Zitro, I don't want to... Amusnet, EGT, they're all there [inaudible 00:16:02].

Yeah.

And yeah, so it's grown from there. We also went from like 85 people that came from five or six different companies. I think we're hitting 175 this year. I think we'll be 350 people in Thessalonica.

Wow. Okay.

And the focus has always been Europe. The focus is land-based casino operations, but we have people from all over the place. We have people from Cambodia, we have people from Curacao, we have people from South Africa operators, we have people from Egypt, we have people from Seminole Hardrock attending. So it's really becoming a thing. I'm very happy with that.

Okay. And well, I mentioned that it was originally known as the Slot Summit and that you started, I think it was around 15 years ago. Can you kind of tell us more about the show's history and those rebrands that occurred then over the course of your history?

Yeah. Clear. Well, it was called the Slot Summit because I run a training program called the Slot Academy. My background is in electronic gaming more than anything else, although over the years, the main thing for me has always been consultancy. And although in the beginning that was very, very much electronic gaming oriented, but it's branched out. So I've been involved in pre-opening with big architects Steelman, everybody knows in different places.

And then it's not only about slot machines anymore, it becomes gaming and then it becomes a bit more than gaming. So I always played with the idea of rebranding Slot Academy, Slot Summit to the Casino Operations Summit, still gaming, but now it's tables, Hybrid, and electronic gaming, which is in one area in the casino typically if you tailor two different player profiles, then it's not along the lines of game types anymore. It's you have tables, slots, and Hybrid in one room, and maybe also in another room, a little bit more of this and a little bit more of the other, but it's not about electronic gaming anymore and that's also reflected by the people in the room.

So most of them are casino managers and up and they are not responsible for table games or slots. They're responsible for gaming. So that was only a natural thing and it really... I sold the Slot Academy and the Slot Summit, I'm saying 10 years ago, although it's all very fluid in my head, ages and times. I sold it to Clarion and Clarion is best known for ICE, the biggest gaming show in the world we can now comfortably say. And when they took it on, I stayed on an [inaudible 00:18:48] with them.

We rebranded this from the Slot Academy to the Totally Gaming Academy. And the idea was that under the umbrella of the Totally Gaming Academy, we would offer trainings on the field of slots and tables and AML and KYC. And that was fairly successful, I would say, that worked well until COVID came.

Yeah.

And then when COVID came, that was the end of that. We tried a bit with Hybrid, but that was just not set up the model yet. And then after COVID, Clarion very generously allowed me to continue, not under their brand, but to continue doing what I did before, as long as I didn't keep the same name, but then I wasn't going to keep that name anyhow. So what used to be the Slot Academy became the Electronic Gaming Academy, and I still do that. I do open courses, I do in-house courses and travel the world with that.

And then the Slot Academy really became, because operations, the Slot Summit really became the Casino Operations Summit. The focus is on land-based gaming. I think the hook for the casino operations summit is really, how do land-based casinos stay relevant in a changing world? That's been the overarching theme for the last five years, and that will not change my guess for the next five years.

It's interesting, and obviously you made the point a few times that the focus is land-based, because those of us who are familiar with attending G2E or attending ICE in Barcelona, next week is the Indian Gaming Association Show in San Diego. All of them, as everyone knows, the focuses have become less and less slots, but also less and less land-based. And I think even when you look at some of the sessions in San Diego next week, I think there's only one or two sessions that are focused specifically on slots.

So for those who have attended those and are familiar with what those events have looked like over the last few years, I'm curious what they're going to see differently at the summit, especially around content on some of the sessions.

Yeah. So I think when Clarion organized ICE in London, I did my step counter on my watch and I made 25,000 steps a day going from N1 to S10 for people who've been in London, they will understand what I say. And when they move to-

Funny that you say that, because I remember seeing Aaron Gomes at this G2 and he just pulls up his watch, he's like, "Look at my steps, man."

20,000 steps. Yeah. And the thing at ICE in London was that it was a mix of land-based and online and affiliates and everything was just mingled. And there were people who said, "Ah, it's nice and what have you." When they went to Barcelona, they took a very conscious decision to say, "You know what? We're going to fill a hole with land-based. We're going to fill a hole with online. We're going to fill a hole with affiliate and payments and dah-dah-dah."

And for me, yes, there are a lot of people in the online part of ICE Barcelona, but the people who are in the land-based part of it, it's tailored, you know each other, these people are there for the same purpose. Even if a company is multi-channel, they have people working in the land-based part and they have people working in the online part. So the division is not tables and slots anymore, it's land-based and it's online, it's different channels.

And when you go to ICE, you will see all the latest of the greatest on the field of land-based. There is only one small problem. If you want to make an appointment with one of the sales directors there, you get 10 minutes and you have to talk fast and there's six people standing behind you. So I think where the Casino Operations Summit really found its niche, and that's why all the big suppliers are there is because the salespeople can spend quality time with their potential or existing customers. They have lunch together, they have dinners together, they have evening programs together. Yes. They get completely drunk together and then next morning, they are all a bit rough, but at the wake-up during the day, it's all about quality time and networking.

I'm telling the sponsors, "Do me a favor, don't bring too much equipment. Everybody's seen your latest and your greatest." You know what? They don't listen to me. So the exhibition part is great anyhow, and it's nice. It really looks nice to have so many machines there, but it's a very intimate event still, 200 people and they all work in the same industry. And I think I know from the operators that are there, I probably know 95%.

So for me, it's a family event and people are very loyal. They come every year because we try to put topics in there that will make them help, that help them. If they make their 10-year forecast or if they're planning their strategy, things that they see in the summit are about what's trending, what's coming, what should you not ignore when you go your five-year planning. And that was Hybrid gaming was a big one there, electronic table game.

So that's established now. But so this year, for example, we're having Paltronics and they're going to talk about the vertical antennas under the chips on roulette tables, roulette's still quite big in Europe. So they're going to talk about that. And really the message is, "Listen, online, all play is personalized. You cannot play anonymous online." In most electronic casinos, play is carded, which means it's more and more personalized.

You can still play anonymous, but it's becoming more and more personalized. And my guess is that two, three years from now, from west to east, it will all be personalized. And then the next logic step is table games. So I think from an AML and KYC perspective in Europe, I, but this is very subjective, cannot imagine that you can still play a table game in Europe 10 years from now anonymously. And that means that the operators really have to start looking at what's cooking, what's brewing, what's coming, what technologies are there already, and how are things going to look five years from now?

I think that sort of catches what we're doing in the summit. So yes, we're talking about land based, yes, we're talking about how it's changing, we're talking about the changing world. Online is still a very important thing there, but I think the real discussion when we're talking about online now, supposed to five years ago is not it's the enemy and they're eating our players. It went from the question, how do we stay relevant to do we compete or do we compliment to do we compete? Do we compliment or do we coexist?

Yeah.

And I think my big story is about the last one. Coexist by looking at different player profiles in a slightly different way, but I think we'll touch on that later more in that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, so I looked over the program and it is a lot... So it's a lot of things that we see. So I know you have a thing on AI, there's a bit of omnichannel stuff, game protection, regulatory work. Yeah. Indeed, two themes I would say really, really stood out. So it's that the coexistence of online and land base in Europe. And the other one, which I know is a hot button for you, transparent communication with players. So maybe you can give us a deeper sense of these topics and why they're such central topics this year.

And I'm wondering in which order I shall do that. I think I will talk about the different player categories first. I think what I've come to realize in the last couple of years, I'm speaking a lot at SBC conferences as well, and that's to a predominantly online audience. And so here is a land-based guy talking to an online audience. And I think 60% of what I said sort of clicked and I could see people recognizing things that I spoke about when I spoke about player preferences and player motivations and the role of dopamine and all this. But I think recently I've become to realize that my breakdown of players, telling people, "Listen, the player does not exist." There are at least three different categories of players and it's all based on motivation and the Limbic Map and what have you, but there are time on device.

There are fun players, people who go to casinos in weekends in groups to be enjoyed, to have fun, to try something for the first time. So they're hedonistic or enjoyers if you look at the Limbic Map. Then their time on device players and time on device players are retired fun players. So there are people who've been in casinos before, but they grow a bit older and then they have a lot of time. So they are not time constrained. They are money constraint. They're very frequent visitors. They visit with a fixed budget and their risk averse.

Fun players don't know the risk. They just play for a short time. And so time on device players are risk averse. Then you have your gamblers who are not risk averse. They're in the casino to fight with the random number generator. And that was the breakdown between the three types of players. And I still stand behind that. Nothing has changed. But what I came to realize, and that's going to be very, very important also this year in the summit, is that it is a bit too narrow because when I talk to an online audience and the question is, which percentage of my players is time on device and which percentage of my players is fun and which percentage of my players is gamblers? Then I have to admit that 95% of the players online is gamblers.

And when I look at the US where 25% of the population plays in casinos every now and then, that 25% is much more than your gamblers. Gamblers in a society are not more than 8%. So it means that the vast majority of people that visit casinos in the United States are either fun player or time on device players. I'm talking about bodies on the floor, bodies behind the machine.

Sure.

So you have a quarter of your players in the US, which are gamblers and the rest are non-gamblers. And if we look at your A, B and C, 80% of the people that are bringing 10% of the bet, those are fun players and time on device players and small stakes gamblers. And then the people who bring your A and your B players who bring 90% of the bet, that's not a very large part of the population on the floor, but they bring by far the largest part of the bottom line of the casino.

Yeah.

So I think it was about time that we were going to look into what... If we look at gamblers only, what do we find there? And I've come to realize that I'm now breaking the gamblers down into subgroups as well. So you have land-based only gamblers, you have Hybrid gamblers. So these are people, these are gamblers and they play both online and land-based, and you have online first gamblers.

And if you look at that and you break it down further, then I come up with names. I have the experiential escalator and the status seekers in the land-based gamblers, the strategic challengers and the professionals in both land-based and online. And I have the adrenaline sprinter, the systematic grinder and the bonus hunter for online only. So now-

Okay. We are really [inaudible 00:30:46]

Oh, yes. So now we can make a map where we say, "Okay. There are some categories in there." Which is a pool in which both land-based and online fish.

Yeah.

There is a pool, a part of the gamblers, which is only for land, and there is a part which is only for online. And how big that part is looking at land-based casinos, and I think we want to touch on that, but we can talk about that now a little bit.

In the United States, where a much bigger part of the people in the casinos are not gamblers, of course, when you start online, the gambler part of the people that visit casinos in the United States, part of those will want to play only online, and part of those will want to play online and land-based, and part of them only wants to play land-based. But if you look at the total population of people playing in the United States at the moment, percentage-wise, they do represent income, but percentage-wise, out of your total population, it's not a very big part of the players that will go play online only.

In Europe, and I think this is what is very interesting, and that's why we can't really compare Europe and the United States. In Europe, people who visit casinos are already predominantly in this gambler category. There are not a lot of time on device players and fun players in European casinos, difference is all over the place. If you take the Hippodrome in London and you go in on a Saturday night, you won't find a lot of gamblers. It's all for fun and whatever. But I think grosso modo, if you look at the European gaming environment, especially if you look at electronic casinos, of which we have a lot, there are five times more slop machines in casinos without table games than there are machines in casinos with table games. So there is electronic casinos and there is a mix of the two.

In these electronic casinos, 99% of the visitors is a gambler. So in Europe, when they started online gaming, yeah, that did impact the land-based casinos quite a bit, because all of them are gamblers.

Yeah. It's an interesting take on this. I haven't heard this take, but I definitely like where you're going with this. It makes some sense to me, for sure.

Yeah.

It's interesting because you're talking about bodies, right? You're talking about the people. You're not necessarily speaking to the size of a wallet, right?

Right.

So I'm curious, those gamblers, I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, are much more lucrative in general than the entertainment players?

For the casino, well, it depends what you're looking at. If you look at... The answer's yes, but if you look at Las Vegas where about 23% of total spend is on gaming and 77% is on non-gaming. So I think if you look at Las Vegas revenues and you compare it to Macau revenues, my guess is that Las Vegas still beats Macau, gaming and non-gaming combined. So for the casino part of the operation, the gambler, and then especially the A and B segment where most of your gamblers are, and gamblers with a higher spend per visit and a much deeper wallet, clear. They have a big impact on the bottom line.

Yeah. In my breakdown, where I talk about people who pay land-based and online, I think some of your really big gamblers prefer the land-based environment because of their motivation and these type of things. And then part of your smallest stake gamblers might not prefer land-based, but it's difficult for them to play online because you need to have access to a bank account and a credit card, and it's not cash money based and what have you. So a lot of the small stage gamblers in Europe at the moment, because they play out of the wallet and not from a plastic card, part of them might want to play online because it's easier and quicker, and there's more of an adrenaline hit and what have you. But I think the circumstance is just not there. If you don't have a card, you can't play online.

So I'm not so worried. I think we have to look at the motivation of these seven different personas that I've now created for the gamblers, four of which would play online, two, only online, two of them online and land-based. So this is really where you can compliment. If you have a multi-channel casino, you can use your land-based estate to give a better experience to your online players. And some of the operators are doing that. I know Sun International is looking at doing that. I know Swiss Casinos are doing that. Quite a few of the customers that I have are really looking at how can we give ourselves a competitive position online compared to the competition by offering players that play online with us a good experience land-based.

Sun City, when everybody, if you live in South Africa, everybody wants to go to Sun City. So if Sun International can tell online players, "Well, play with us with SunBet, because then we can hook you, we can give you a hotel room in Sun City." And I can really see the huge benefits of having a land-based offering to tailor to and make yourself more popular with online players.

Yeah. Okay. So that's really covering this whole concern that everybody has in Europe about staying relevant in land-based and trying to see those channels converging. And then what about the transparent communication with players thing? This is something for as long as I've known you, and I have to say for myself, when I really started diving into the segments and learning about these people, especially that A segment, that was so interesting to me is realizing how sophisticated these players are and also just kind of how determined they are.

So when they come in, they really do know what they're after and what they're looking for. And so it was just completely fascinating for me. But I know that, and what I find is indeed transparent communication with these people is critical. And you've been somebody who has pushed this for as long as I've known you. It's communicating very clearly with these people and just transparently. So maybe, yeah, you can touch on this.

I'm one of them. I am a gambler. So I sit in one of these seven categories and people know that for as long as I've lived and worked in this industry, I've played in casinos and I identify with a lot of the things, even when we're talking about problem gambling and I see people around me working in the industry and sometimes I recognize, I think, "Oh, you like to play too." So quite often I ask myself the question, "Yeah, but why this and why that?"

The thing with breaking players down, gamblers down into different categories is I've come to realize that although I'm a gambler, I've tried online, but it does absolutely nothing to me. I'm completely happy with people who want to play online and happy with that, but it just does not tick any of my boxes. So online is simply not my thing.

I did trainings for companies that were setting up their online part. I spent time with Playtech. I've been in that part of the industry long enough to have to get an interest in playing online, and I did, but it just doesn't work for me. So I thought if that's true for me, it must be true for a lot of other gamblers as well. And that's how I came up with the different categories, which clearly identify where I sit and what my behavior is and so on and so forth.

So in the same category, I noticed at one point that when I was on the casino floor where I hadn't been before, I always ended up playing the games that I always played before because I knew sort of from experience what the math model behind it was. Yeah. I'm one of those players who wants to get into trouble financially and then with my last hundred dollars, get up, end up in the free spins and then, poof, get out of trouble.

That for me, the best casino experiences I have is losing much more money than I wanted and then breaking even. That for me lasts much longer, the memory of, "Oh, that was a great session. That absolutely worked." Then you are a gambler because you are nothing all the time when I say things that gamblers do. I'm looking at the screen. I see Dan, he fully gets where I'm going with this.

So I'm the type of player who needs to dig a hole for himself, preferably seen by others, and then getting out of the hole. It's not about the winning, it's about these very volatile elements in the games. And the reason that I don't play games that I've never played before, I'm a typical gambler, which means I'm time constrained. I'm not so much money constrained, but I can't afford to play five hours in the casino because the next morning I have to work or have a meeting or something like that. If I'm very time constrained and I go with my money to a game that I've never known before, because looking at the title, I think it is volatile, chances are that I get disappointed, that I lose a big part of the time that I have available during a visit on playing games that I don't like.

This is completely your story, Nick, where you talk about sticky and slippery games, right? I fear playing slippery game, meaning a game that doesn't do what ticks my boxes. And I think that is true for a lot of gamblers. We are too time constrained to sit there and to test things that are not going to work for us. So when I realized at one point that Williams came with a suite of games, which was-

The G+?

... G+, which they forgot to tell the slot operators, but it really meant Gamblers plus. So this was, well, they should have told the slot operators as well, right? So when they came with a suite of games, which were all tailored to gamblers and were very volatile, I noticed when I ended up on an American casino floor where I didn't know the games, I always ended up playing these games because I knew at least they gave me an experience that I was looking for somewhat somehow.

And I remember the marketing director from IGT in the day, he came to a course and then he said, "Listen, I cracked it. I came up with this little symbol that we now put on all our multi-game devices in the UK, we labeled the games with a rollercoaster and either it's a rollercoaster that is fairly flat, there is no high..." So you don't win, you don't lose, that's what it communicated. And then we have a rollercoaster that does more steeper curve, and the third one is a rollercoaster that makes it a total roller.

Yeah.

He said, "And what we want to do with that is not telling people, we want to communicate an experience. If you play this game, what experience are you likely going to get?"

Yes.

It's like a guy who is going downhill skiing and he's in Banff and he's never skied before and I think he needs to know if the hill he's going to descend is a red, a blue or a black slope. I think that is relevant information because there are people who will only go to black slopes, otherwise they fall asleep halfway and there are people who will never go on a black slope because they're just not fit and ready to do that in their mind.

And I remember one metaphor you used to use were like the peppers on a Thai menu, right?

Oh, the peppers. Yeah. Yeah. So if it's about communicating what experience you're going to get, go to an Asian or a Thai restaurant, Chinese restaurant, my Chinese is not good. Actually, I don't speak Chinese, but if I look at the menu and I see peppers there, then I know what I don't want and I know what I can't handle. So it's a one easy symbol that tells people, "Listen, this is flat, this is a bit more spicy, this is very, very spicy." And I think you can translate that to slot games as well.

And then sure, volatility is a very important component in that, but it's not the only one because I've been really thinking and talking about this, even with the likes of GLI, because I told GLI, "If there's anybody on the planet who can help me with this, it's you. You can tell me for every game you test, if we assume that the average duration that a person spends in a land-based casino is two hours, then tell me for every game you've tested after 1500 games, two hours of play, what's the standard deviation?"

And then we can label games, GLI approved. And then GLI can tell you this game is a banana and this game is a pepper. So I'm still there. I'm still talking to people and I'm still not completely there. So when I ended up talking to Grant Stousland, who is now developing an app where casino visitors can say, "Well, I played this game and I like this game, but you know what? I do get a little bit bored of this game." The big problem with slot games is it doesn't matter how volatile or whatever, if you've played the same game long enough, you get bored.

And the reason I think is that you can't change your own volatility. If you go to a roulette table, I've played roulette my whole life and I will play roulette my whole life because on a roulette table, I make my own volatility. I can start very non-volatile. And if I win with the same bet, with the same bet, I can make my bet much more volatile. I can put 50 chips on one number at the end of the day, right?

On a slot machine, I can't do that. Technically, I think you could, you could actually have multiple sets of real symbols behind the same pay table and you could allow a player to say, "I want to play one pepper by having a very flat pay table and I want to go two or three or four." Which in fact would mean that you would then have a game that tailors to all player types, right?

Right.

I really think that that is something that... This is a freebie for the suppliers out there. I really think that you could come up with a game where you allow players with the same pay table and the same symbols and same everything to choose the volatility they want to play by having multiple real combos behind it because there must be 600 different fruit games out there. Go online, that's the only thing that works, really gamblers.

So if I would throw these 600 fruit games on a big screen, purple hot, extreme hot, extremely hot, blazing, hot, super hot, hotter than hot, the most hot, semi hot for that. And I would ask people in the room, tell me which of these games is the hottest one. Nobody would be able to tell me. So how do you know which fruit game to play if it doesn't give you a little bit of information about what hot really means hot?

Yeah.

And I think that's what Grant's trying and I'm fully on board with that. I think that is super, super important because new games will not be played by your A segment. They will not. They're not going to risk their money on games that they don't know. So they either hear or see people around them playing those games and they think, "Whoa, if that would be me with my bet, what would have happened?" Type thing.

I think a new game becomes popular by your C and B category playing on it, and then the A category might catch on. And in a land-based casino, that's because they can see it or maybe they get a bit of help from attendance or maybe even Staus, Grant, his app can help buy it. But then I think, "How earth is that going to work online?"

Yeah.

Online, more is better. At least that's what they think. 1500 games is better than a thousand games. I don't buy into that. I think it would be better to have 50 games and explain players what each of these games does.

Yeah.

If you go to hotels.com, if you want to sleep in a hotel in Minneapolis, then first you say how many stars with area, dah-dah-dah.

Sure.

You select what you're expecting, the gym and dah-dah-dah. And then based on your selection criteria, they show you 10 hotels. If online casinos would follow the same logic, so you could say, "I want a fruit game. It has to be very volatile, whatever that means. I want a progressive, dah-dah-dah." Then you get 10 games which will all sort of match your preferences and the risk that you're going to lose a big part of your money or a big part of your time on games that are slippery for you is much smaller than what we do at the moment.

So yeah, I strongly believe that we have to start telling players what's under the hood.

Yeah.

It's fascinating. And I think I agree with you. And a lot of times you see new games that first two or three months, they're kind of steady, steady, steady. And then month three or month four, you see that pop and that pickup and I think it's-

Or the other direction.

Or the other direction. Right? You say sampling, sampling, sampling, and then either the A players pick it up and it hits or it doesn't. And what you say about volatility, I think the challenge is exactly what you just said, which is how do you, A, agree on what this definition is, and B, how do you communicate it in a clear way? I forget which manufacturer it was 10 years ago, put that meter on the games. It was a great idea. Everyone was like, "Oh, that makes a lot of sense." It failed. Because nobody understood it.

Right.

But I wonder, I don't know... I mean, it's something Aristocrat could do because they have a large share of the market, and so they could do it on their own. Maybe it's something that operators have to do because the idea of getting all these manufacturers to agree on what is this definition and what are the personas and what are the different rides that we're going to communicate is very challenging, especially when you think about, does volatility mean base game payout and frequency? Does it mean how often does the bonus hit? Does it mean when the bonus hits? What's the distribution of major versus minor? It's very complicated, but I hear this conversation all the time, and I agree with you that if somebody can figure it out, it definitely improves the customer experience.

Well, and I think as we do, because we do a lot of market basket work, so we're looking at clustering titles that tend to be... So when we look at A's, there's a basket of stuff that is just going to drive profitability and productivity in those players. So you cluster them around each other on the floor. You find the areas where they're typically for A segment players, again, to Lucien's point, not wasting their time having ATMs around, having bathrooms around it, things that are well patrolled by a service, et cetera. But getting those products together, and we ultimately always run into the question, "Well, how do we convince players that they should go from Title A to Title B because it's a complimentary product?"

And our answer is always, "Tell them that you analyze your play and you think that this is something that they'll like." And because I agree with Lucien, these people tend to be more than anything time constrained. And what we found is that coming forward, talking to them saying, "Hey, look, we looked at your play. We see that you like this particular profile game. These are very similar. You might like these." They love it.

It's not like I just get this argument is tough for me, this idea of preserving the mystique of everything. Well, I just don't think that really works anymore. I think it's more about just telling people you understand what it is that they're after and you're offering it up to them. And I feel it's a winner approach.

I agree.

Yeah. I agree. And I mean, talking land-based versus online, the average duration of play online is much shorter. If on land-based, the average time people spend during a casino visit is two hours. Online, you're looking at 20 minutes. So online, what we're talking about is even more important than land-based, if you have three sessions online with a game that you would normally play in a land-based casino, but let's say you don't know this game.

In a land-based casino, if you play for two hours, take an old game like Zoos, the bonus will happen at some point. It should happen once per 300 games. If you play two hours, it should have happened five times. If you're lucky, it happened eight times. If you're unlucky, it happened two times. That's where the volatility comes in. You either lose a shitload of money or you won a lot.

Now, if you would start to play that same game online in 20 minutes, it's very possible the bonus doesn't happen and during the second session again and during the third session again. So this game might be exactly what you're looking for, but because the bonus didn't come three games. Well, you're never going to play it again.

Right.

So what you see online is that a lot of the popular games are the games where players can buy the bonus. So they can just buy the free spins. It costs a bit of money, of course, but so what they really do there is buy volatility. And I think this is a discussion that's going to... For me, this is a discussion which is much more important than the discussion about RTP. That's an important discussion as well, but you know what? We've spent, and there's pros and cons and it's almost religious and people know, or they don't know and they believe and everybody who believes different is stupid. But at the end of the day, I think the discussion about volatility tailored to player experience, because if you could have a game which is flat as a pancake with a million dollar jackpot, which takes 15% of the total pay table, that would be a super volatile game, but that is not what you would feel if you would play it for two hours, if you get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I mean, it will be people like you, Nick, who have the ability to backward engineer to look at 10,000 sessions played on game title A, and then say, "Okay, let's look at the outcome of these sessions." Bet to win ratio, right?

Yeah.

So out of the 10,000 sessions, you have 8,000 sessions where it was 6% loss of the bet to rate. And so that might then be qualified or clustered as a non-volatile game. And you have other games where if you look, but does that make sense? Because I think that would be something that-

Yeah. We do these. We have these metrics out there. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I would absolutely like to look at that with you and see if we can come up with a way of communicating expected experience based on historical session data.

Yeah.

It's not going to help the suppliers with their new games, but one of the reasons why they come with clones is exactly because of discussion what we're having at the moment. If you can't explain a player what a game with a title and symbols that nobody knows is going to do, if you can't explain that, then your A segment players are not going to play it.

Yeah. That's a great point.

Lucien, real quick, I would say for you, as you look into this, I would suggest it's probably more in trust session data. Data ultimately that is going to give you this answer than session level data because seeing the ride spin by spin as opposed to seeing, hey, there's a lot of ways you can get to... I lost $300 at the end of the day, that could be a very slow and steady ride. That could also be a ride where I had big ups and downs. And obviously that involves a lot more either investment or partnership with the CMS companies to get at that data, but it's fascinating.

So yes, we're saying exactly the same. And I was unclear by saying session data, I would say a thousand games or 1,500 games played. So you look at blocks of 1,500 games and then you ask yourself the question, what happened bet to win or loss ratio? Yeah. Sorry. But we're saying the same. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Can I ask you real quick about game design? So you obviously spoke about convergence and omnichannel and the importance on the marketing front of making sure that that online player is able to have a great experience land-based. In the US at G2E last year, one of the slot manufacturers showed a couple games from Evolution that they were bringing to the land-based casino. Outside of that, you're not really seeing a lot of influence in either direction on what games are coming to market between land and online in North America. The manufacturers are still extremely fragmented with those divisions.

I'm curious, because Europe's so far ahead of the game on online compared to North America, have you seen any impact on what the electronic gaming product looks like in the casino because of online, either in terms of the games that people are playing or different kinds of features or titles?

I think what we see in Europe is, I would say more the other way around, where quite a few of the games that are being offered online are actually games that were designed for land-based, but that is because of the dominance of a couple of very big groups of game designers in Europe. And so in Europe, Novomatic, EGT and Merkur are very dominant and they're also dominant in the online sphere with games. So you take countries like... All the German-speaking countries, people grew up with Novomatic games, and therefore Novomatic games online work as well.

If you go to the Scandinavian countries where people did not grow up with a land-based environment and you look at what works online, it's completely different. So it's really very much depending on the country and to the extent where if you look online, there are countries in Europe where their play online is much bigger than land-based. And this is true in Scandinavian countries more than in other countries, but there are also countries where...

So I looked at in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, almost 70% of total play is... 70% of total play is online and 30% of total play is land-based. So that's in Scandinavian countries. And if you look at a country like France or Germany or Italy, 25% of play is online and 75% of play is land-based. So there is not a single overarching thing. And the other thing that you can look at, if you look at online markets where online is very strong and you look at the online products, then what you can see is that there are certain countries in Cyprus and Slovakia and the UK, betting is prevalent. So there is much more money on betting than online video games or... Yeah.

And if you look at Denmark, for example, Germany and Denmark, lottery, so it's a very, very dominant lottery market. So there isn't a single lesson to be learned from Europe, I think, that is going to help the US.

Let's see just a sec...

But I would say that in the US, because you are so obsessed with data and sport, I would think that sport betting as a percentage of total online betting has to be the biggest part of it going forward-

Oh, yeah. For sure.

... going to be...

And at present, it's huge as well.

So one last question, Lucien, something I'm always interested in, and I'll let you pick how you want to answer this is those of us who have been in the industry a while, we've obviously seen huge technology evolution, tons of change. And I'm always curious how people are thinking differently. In your time in this industry, is there either some way that you thought fundamentally about the business that maybe you think differently now, or potentially are there any misconceptions out there that tends to be thought of as common knowledge in the industry, but you're working to educate people about thinking a little differently?

Yeah. That's an interesting question. First of all, it makes me realize that I have been around for a couple of years. That's the painful part about it. I'm not sure if it's misconceptions. I think the industry is evolving and the world around of us may be at a much faster pace than our industry. And sometimes I get to customers where I think Switzerland is quite a good example.

So in Switzerland, casinos opened 20 some years ago, they got a license for 20 years, and then after 20 years, if they applied and they won, they could get a license for another 20 years. So what I found in Switzerland, in a couple of casinos, is that you walk into a casino that had been built and designed 20 years ago, and now the question is, what are we going to do for the next 20 years? So that is a super clear cutoff moment in time. The way we thought and built 20 years ago, would that still work if we go forward?

20 years ago, it was okay to put a casino in a basement without daylight and without clocks on the wall because you wouldn't tell customers what time it was and you want them to forget about time and that might still be partly true for casinos that tailor to weekend players that have three nights and they could forget time and what have you, but most of the casinos in the United States, but definitely in Europe, don't tailor to weekend players. They tailor to locals.

And I think for locals, the world has completely changed. And I think if there is a misconception, then it is to think that the people that have brought us money over the last 20 years in land-based gaming will continue to do so for the next 20 years. I think that is a big, big mistake in thinking. I remember that Noah Acres did a very interesting speech at cost last year. And one of the things he said, he said, "It's not only that people who play in casinos get older."

And he said, "If you look at their disposable income, if you look at the wallet that they have for leisure, the percentage that they can spend on gaming now compared to what they could spend 20 or 30 years ago is dramatically different. There are so many things you can do now with your disposable income. There's competition for the disposable income much more than there was 20, 30 years ago."

And I think that is something that a lot of casinos have not realized yet. They think that people come to their casinos and will give them 100% of their disposable income, and that's simply not going to happen. It might be true for people who played slot machines and are over 60, but it is definitely not true for people who are under 30, who want to go out for an evening and enjoy themselves or whatever. Part of their wallet will go to other things.

Yeah. So I think that's a misconception. And that's been one of the sticking points at the summit. If you want to stay relevant, then you have to look at what makes casinos immersive, not only for fun players and time on device players, but also for your gamblers. There's a big part of gamblers that would not come to your casino if you wouldn't tick the boxes that they are looking for.

Gotcha. Okay. So Lucien, I see we're coming up on the hour here. So I guess the last question we have for you today is for anybody who's listening and decided that they want to attend the casino operations summit, are there still spaces left and how could people find information on the event?

So this is the free publicity part of the podcast?

This is the free plug, indeed.

For whatever reason. I always like that best. Yes. Well, the hotels are running full, but the good news is that there are hotels in the vicinity of the Hyatt Regency Conference Center in Thessaloniki in Greece, April 21, 22, 23. Most people travel there on April 20. The conference room is big enough. If people go to www.casinooperationssummit.net, then they can see where it is, what the program is and who the speakers are. But for those of you who have been in this industry for a while, Dennis Conrad is somebody that can't be missed and he is one of the keynote speakers.

Mr. Anthony Lucas, professor from UNLV, he's there for the last five years, and people, it is dead silent in the room when he's talking. He delivers through Zoom, but he's very good at that as well. And this year, he's my age, he's in his late 40s too. So he does a presentation where he said, "What would I have done different if I could do it again the last 40 years in gaming?" Which I think is super interesting?

And then of course there was Grant Stousland who's talking about how to inform players about... And we always have a couple of fantastic speakers. I mean, Erwin van Lambaart, the CEO from Casinos Austria, this man can talk for hours and you would just not be bored because he has such a world of knowledge on the fun economy, not necessarily casinos, although he knows his part there as well, but he's worked for huge entertainment companies doing musicals and when meeting Whoopi Goldberg live and these type of things.

And of course, Simon Thomas is somebody who is always there and he changed the West End in London by what he's doing because with 20 slot machines, thank you very much. They can expand a little bit now. But I think these are people that carry such an enormous wealth of knowledge and inspiration for people that want to operate.

Yes. So no, I'm really looking forward to this year's program. I think it is, I'm never happy, but I think it's the best program we've had so far. And that's not because you are also one of the returning speakers there, Nick. He's part of it. Yes.

Oh, I thought that was the reason. Damn. Okay. Yeah.

No. It's part of it. It's part of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Very good. Well, Lucien, as always, really appreciate your time that you spent with us today and very much looking forward to the summit next month. I mean, we can try to figure out how to get Dan over there. I think that's the next-

Okay. Plane flights to Greece as we speak.

Oh, there we go.

Very. Good.

No. You would not be the only one. We have another Dan, Dan Ingster there. And so I'm very proud that this is happening now. The quality of the speakers are going up, the quality of the delegates are going up. And for me, these are the three days of the year where I learn more than anybody else. Yeah. It's cool. It's a nice event, I have to say.

Looking forward to it. Okay, gents. Well, thank you so much both of you, for your time today. And as I mentioned, we'll be looking forward to seeing you there next month, Lucien.

Thank you very much, Nick. Dan, thank you very much. I hope to see you in Thessaloniki.

Absolutely. Take care.

Thanks, gents. Bye-bye.