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Three Low-Cost Strategies to Improve Your Slots Floor Performance

Mar 24, 2023

Global economic conditions are once again being highlighted this year. A squeeze in spending can be applied to the casino environment during hard financial times or when significant capital expenditures are diverted to other areas of the business. In this blog, we will explore three minimal-cost solutions to drive revenue growth: conversions, game moves, and optimizing leases.

When considering opportunities to grow slot floor revenue, most operators will prioritize two levers:

  1. Capital Spending - programs to purchase physical assets to improve the product suite, property amenities, and facilities.
  2. Operational Spending - programs to increase marketing to customers by utilizing promotions, competitions, and events.

In the absence of any significant spend, many operators also make strategic decisions to optimize their slot floor. In this post, we explore the following three decisions that can help drive performance improvements with minimal spend:

  • Conversions
  • Game Moves
  • Optimizing Leases

Conversions

To optimize the performance of your casino floor, it's important to review the performance of your cabinets by type. Even if you have 50 units of the same cabinet, it's likely that some games are underperforming while others are highly utilized. Before investing in new cabinets, it's crucial to sit down with your manufacturer's representative and discuss ways to maximize the performance of your current cabinets. This initial conversation can help identify opportunities for improving the performance of existing games and determining which games should have more copies on the floor.

In the example image above, the hypothetical casino should ask Vendor X to convert their underperforming Helix XT cabinet themes, like Game E and Game F, to the highly utilized, high Theoretical Win per unit per day themes, like Game A and Game B.

Before taking a title off the floor, it’s also imperative to understand location analytics and player behavior - what if it’s just a bad location or a ‘middle-seat’ effect on certain titles? What if some titles have a higher loyalty to high frequency customers albeit lower performance? Finding the right game to remove from the floor requires deeper insights.

Game Moves

As a follow-on to the previous point, deeper insights into the performance of each game title may uncover new opportunities. By regularly monitoring game performance, you can identify games that are underperforming in one location and over-occupied in another. Implement a solution that improves overall performance by moving games to create a better guest experience, redistribute traffic and create a balanced floor. We explore this idea in detail in this blog post: Should You Segment Your Slot Floor? 

This approach could also be used to replace other underperforming products in the same location.

In the example image above, the underperforming titles in Zone 1 (Game A) are similar in game mechanics to the strong titles in Zone 2. Moving the games from Zone 1 into Zone 2 would give customers a better experience of the titles they are seeking, and help boost floor performance. They could also take the place of the nearby underperforming games in Zone 2 (Game B) that have a high guest loyalty, indicating that customers will be able to find this game even if it is not in a premium location.

Maximizing the Value of Leased Products

Most casino floors have multiple leased games from the same manufacturer. However, performance may vary and it’s imperative to measure the right KPIs to determine the optimal balance of lease titles on the floor. Vendors should be held  accountable to ensure that each leased game is performing, and operators should also hold themselves accountable to measure the right benchmarks for leased products. The wrong benchmarks may actually hurt performance. By monitoring the performance of leased games and working with the manufacturer to optimize the games, operators can improve the overall performance of their casino floor without incurring additional costs. 

In the example image above, the hypothetical casino should ask Vendor Y to convert their underperforming lease games, like Game J and Game K, to the highly utilized, high theoretical win per unit per day games, like Game G and Game H.

Conclusion

With a clear understanding of the gaming floor data, operators can easily make strategic decisions that will optimize their floor at a minimal cost, even when capital isn’t available. The complexity is that it's a multi-dimensional problem with several factors at play - assessment of financial performance, operational performance, location analytics, and player analytics - to truly drive positive changes. 

Moreover, are the changes tracked or benchmarked once completed? Did it generate incremental revenue or simply ‘move money around’? Having access to the right data will help offer answers to these questions. 

Arming operators with the right software tools to make these decisions can be a winning strategy to drive profit growth. 

Look out for our next blog, which will look at three more low-cost ways to boost revenue.


At Tangam, we are at the core of prescriptive analytics to transform how operators get the most out of their gaming floor, blending a wealth of knowledge in software development, data science, machine learning, visualization, and casino operations best practices. Our slot optimization product, SODA automatically generates recommendations with a quantified EBITDA lift to drive performance improvements with minimal capital spend.

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Author(s)

David Croft

As SVP of Gaming Optimisation & Strategy, David Croft brings over 15 years of expertise in leading gaming strategy, analytics, and innovation across table games, slots, and ETGs. Before joining Tangam, David oversaw gaming product optimization at some of the largest chain operators in Australia including Crown Resorts and The Star Entertainment Group. At Tangam David's vision is to help partners drive gaming performance improvements by utilizing best practices in organizational structure and business intelligence tools for a better guest experience and increased profitability.

Nicole Wood

Nicole Wood is one of our data analysts who works to deliver a strategy and ensures that our partners benefit the most from our actionable software recommendations.

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Caesars Entertainment

Melissa Price

SVP of Corporate Gaming

“[Tangam’s] real-time data gives us a deeper insight that allows us to quickly adjust to customer needs, while also establishing new business goals and tracking the success of our strategy.”
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Mohegan Sun

Jeff Hamilton

President and General Manager

“Reporting alone doesn't provide answers. We chose SODA for its highly differentiated offering that provides a clear set of actionable recommendations, which maximize gaming performance and the guest experience.”
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Sycuan Casino Resort

Sierra Weyer

Director of Enterprise Analytics

“During our initial trial, it was amazing to see how quickly we were able to get to the answers in our data through the lens of SODA. This truly made analytics available to anyone - with intelligent recommendations, intuitive visualizations and seamless drill-downs. We are equally excited about the product roadmap over the coming months.”
View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

Jeff Hamilton

President and General Manager at Mohegan Sun

"Extending our partnership with Tangam to our full gaming operation, including tables and slots, was a no-brainer given Tangam's proven track record of business support."
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Sycuan Casino Resort

Douglas Vogelei

Senior Vice President of Casino Operations

"Sycuan is dedicated to providing an enhanced gaming experience for our patrons. By deploying powerful prescriptive analytics tools such as TYM and SODA, our operations and analytics teams are able to get data-driven insights at the right times to drive value to our business."
View Press Release

The Star - Sydney

David Croft

General Manager Product & Strategy

“Due to our ongoing success with Tangam at Sydney, we’re able to deliver the right product at the right time, leading to improvements in efficiency, transparency, decision-making and our bottom line.”
View Press Release

The Star - Sydney

David Croft

General Manager Product & Strategy

“Due to our ongoing success with Tangam at Sydney, we’re able to deliver the right product at the right time, leading to improvements in efficiency, transparency, decision-making and our bottom line.”
View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

Kevin Lowry

Vice President and CFO

“We’d like to thank the exceptional team at Tangam Systems for what has been a very successful implementation that we undertook together. We immediately saw positive returns and an improved guest experience. Our team is very much looking forward to continue leveraging Tangam and all it has to offer from a floor optimization standpoint.”
View Press Release
Read All Testimonials

What Clients Say About Us

Caesars Entertainment

“[Tangam’s] real-time data gives us a deeper insight that allows us to quickly adjust to customer needs, while also establishing new business goals and tracking the success of our strategy.”

Melissa Price

SVP of Corporate Gaming

View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

“Reporting alone doesn't provide answers. We chose SODA for its highly differentiated offering that provides a clear set of actionable recommendations, which maximize gaming performance and the guest experience.”

Jeff Hamilton

President and General Manager

View Press Release

Sycuan Casino Resort

“During our initial trial, it was amazing to see how quickly we were able to get to the answers in our data through the lens of SODA. This truly made analytics available to anyone - with intelligent recommendations, intuitive visualizations and seamless drill-downs. We are equally excited about the product roadmap over the coming months.”

Sierra Weyer

Director of Enterprise Analytics

View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

"Extending our partnership with Tangam to our full gaming operation, including tables and slots, was a no-brainer given Tangam's proven track record of business support."

Jeff Hamilton

President and General Manager at Mohegan Sun

View Press Release

Sycuan Casino Resort

"Sycuan is dedicated to providing an enhanced gaming experience for our patrons. By deploying powerful prescriptive analytics tools such as TYM and SODA, our operations and analytics teams are able to get data-driven insights at the right times to drive value to our business."

Douglas Vogelei

Senior Vice President of Casino Operations

View Press Release

The Star - Sydney

“Due to our ongoing success with Tangam at Sydney, we’re able to deliver the right product at the right time, leading to improvements in efficiency, transparency, decision-making and our bottom line.”

David Croft

General Manager Product & Strategy

View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

“We’d like to thank the exceptional team at Tangam Systems for what has been a very successful implementation that we undertook together. We immediately saw positive returns and an improved guest experience. Our team is very much looking forward to continue leveraging Tangam and all it has to offer from a floor optimization standpoint.”

Kevin Lowry

Vice President and CFO

View Press Release
Read All Testimonials