SAN DIEGO – While some casino executives lament how free play cuts into their bottom line, two experts who track slot play urged Native American slot directors and marketing executives to remember that it still plays an important role in luring players to gamble.
“In reality, what players want today is no different from what they wanted 20 years ago,” said Mike Meczka, owner of Meczka Marketing Research Consulting. “If a player tells you they are coming to your casino to win, they are wrong. Time on the device is what’s critical.”
Players want a game that is reliable, predictable, and understandable, he said, and which offers a reasonable return. “They want an escape from everyday life. They’re (probably) not thinking they’ll win $10,000 or $20,000.”
Even a quick profit of $500 to $700 wouldn’t be enough to cause a lot of players to quit playing if they’d only been at the casino for an hour or so, Meczka said.
“Players say ‘I will give (you) all my money if you give me long enough’. They’re buying excitement and time.”
That leads into free play, which Meczka called “the 800-pound gorilla” that the industry created. “We did it to ourselves,” he said, “and we have nobody else to blame.”
According to Meczka, one of the biggest issues with gaming is the industry doesn’t understand its customers. The casinos don’t know what the customers want and therefore need to do to keep them coming back to the casino.
The more free play a player gets, the more likely he or she is to visit the casino, Meczka said, and the worst move a casino can make is to cut their free play offers back significantly. That will cause the player to consider competitors.
Profitable Customers President Mary Loftness, also on the panel, cautioned casino executives to ensure that free play isn’t the entire reason for a person’s visit, saying that ideally it should be 20 to 30 percent. It’s important to reward players with free play who plan to spend money out of their pockets anyway, she said, in order to protect the profit margin.
Free play is a good tool because casinos aren’t always filled close to capacity. Offering enticements for someone to come in and play at a non-peak livens the floor and creates the opportunity for a larger budget from the player, she said.
If the casino usually runs at or near full capacity at night, for example, Loftness said the free play offer should be earmarked for use only during times when the casino isn’t as busy.
“We need to have good free play… (it) correlates well with player loyalty and frequency,” Meczka said. “Our research says free play is the single most important marketing tool, depending on the market.”
