By Steve Norton
CEO, Norton Management

Showboat Owner Wants to Bring Another Casino to Atlantic City

My comment:

Bart Blatstein, owner of the Showboat, is approaching Atlantic City's revival in a more realistic way. Recently, New Jersey has added sports betting but instead of using sports parlors to create more casino visitors, we have instead chosen to add it to our online gaming options so there is little reason to visit a live casino. That is unless there is a star performer or live event taking place in the city.

Atlantic City, and the gaming industry has tried to attract the newest legal population demographic, the Millennial's, people who were born between 1981 and 2000, and grew up on complex video games where skill was an important element. They even paid for game features, that improved their chance of winning, now being outlawed in many states and countries, as a form of gambling called "loot boxes".

In the US many slot manufacturers have been developing games with skill elements, but the difficulty I see is that a true video game may take 5 minutes to play, where today's cashless slot machine takes no more than five or six seconds. So, one answer is to charge 50 times as much per game, to give the operator a chance to earn the same as a regular slot machine. Or an even better way is to create video type competitions which are taking place today in Las Vegas and appears to be a direction that Mr. Blatstein may take at Showboat.

I recently blogged an AC Press article on the growing interest in e-sports, applauding the effort even if it doesn't produce a lot of revenue or profit from the event. But if organized for mid-week periods, these tournaments could be a new way to attract visitors to our casino resorts, and like the Vegas Strip, profit from room and food and beverage sales that out-earned the casino, by a two to one margin in fiscal year 2018.

Showboat still has a great location, with physical interior walkways to Hard Rock and Resorts, and is also next door to Ocean Resort, putting it dead center to two larger properties, with the potential for a lot of Boardwalk traffic at its front door.