Casino Enterprise Management

From the labor-intensive, error-prone, manual processes to the cumbersome registration and sign-in procedures, there is nothing sexy about executing a slot tournament in today’s market. But like we discussed in last month’s article on defining the ultimate slot experience, it’s not your fault. Slot tournaments are difficult to execute well, even for the best slot and marketing teams the world over. However, there’s hope.

If you could free yourself from the confines of your current system limitations, we think there’s a way to bring the sexy back to tournament execution. As you read through this article, think about the ideal ways to accomplish your ultimate tournament strategy without worrying about how it’s actually done, and at the end of this series we’ll help you on your way to achieving it.

Execution
One of the biggest challenges to overcome when executing a slot tournament is how to make those stellar ideas developed in the planning stage come to life. If you don’t excel at execution, the time and money spent designing the tournament is lost. Consider these four key execution elements (see Figure 1): 

Configuration
Registration and sign-in
Session management
Scoring and prize distribution

Let’s dive into the first—configuration. 

Configuration
Detailing the configuration of your tournament will help wonders with execution, and Figure 2 outlines the many parts to consider. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a system that allows you to configure these elements easily? It would help empower your creative team to effortlessly manage and implement a variety of tournament formats.

Each element is a building block that comes together to describe the rules of the tournament. With these rules in place, your staff will know and understand how the tournament is supposed to function. Plus, you can enhance your player marketing materials by including the rules and structure of the tournament on each piece. With so many configuration options—many previously unexplored—there is a whole lot of room for you to create a much more compelling and emotional experience.

Registration and Sign-In
When players approach the registration area, they’re looking to sign in and learn more about the structure, rules and session times. If this process is arduous, you’ll have a hard time gathering the player enthusiasm necessary to create a fun and exciting event. That’s why even though it might seem impossible, it’s important to make the registration and sign-in process entertaining. Consider turning it into a simple game, where players randomly draw for their seats and session times. It just might wet their appetite for fun, as well as their wallet, before the tournament begins. Take some time to explore the possibilities.

After registering and signing in, players need to leave with some kind of credentials. Think about how you currently handle this. Does it entail a card or piece of paper? In all of our experiences, it has, but what if it was a text or e-mail instead? Maybe players could even have a Facebook or Twitter message pushed to their page letting friends know they’re about to have some fun at your casino. All it takes is for your creative mind to make these credentials a bit more interactive to create a much more engaging—and profitable—experience. Just remember to keep the registration and sign-in process simple, effective and highly organized to keep player excitement alive.

Session Management
Let’s face it, not all tournament announcers are equal. We’ve seen our fair share of dynamic entertainers (the Chumash Casino in Southern California has an excellent one), but often it’s a players club associate roped into the duty or an aging fellow who has the enthusiasm of a slug. We recently visited a Las Vegas Strip casino hosting daily tournaments that led up to a very large prize, yet the announcer was so apathetic you barely noticed she was there.

The truth is, the announcer sets the stage for the level of enjoyment and engagement throughout the tournament, and it is incredibly important that they are not only fun, but also focused on ensuring all players receive top-notch customer service. A quality announcer can help identify customer service issues and, more importantly, prevent them by managing the area just like a sports referee would. But if hosted events aren’t in your budget, there are other ways you could increase entertainment and service. How about a dynamic announcer built into the system or an avatar host on the game screen?

Besides the necessity of a great emcee, it’s also important to get your players into and out of the tournament area as quickly and efficiently as possible to avoid impacting the next session. In order to effectively manage this, staff must ensure players are on the right machines (assuming they are assigned) before the tournament begins, and then gather the session scores immediately after the session ends. Think through this entire process. What would make this easier, more fun and increase accuracy?

With players huddled into one area of the casino floor, it’s also important to think about the comfort of the people watching. If your execution is flawless up until this point, you should have amassed many people eager to watch the action go down. It could be friends or family of the participant, future participants or simply curious individuals who just happen to walk by. No matter who they are, the tournament environment is a tremendous opportunity to enhance energy. Think of it as a Broadway stage production happening in the middle of your casino floor. 

Scoring and Prize Distribution
Scoring is perhaps one of the most burdensome and potentially costly processes for your staff during a slot tournament. In fact, we spoke to one very well known casino whose management team told us about a $400,000 scoring mistake. Ouch. It was a series of cascading errors that became a nightmare for players and staff. The incident happened years ago when the manual scoring process took a turn for the worse. They now have a manually intensive and tedious verification process as a direct result.

If you’re still manually recording scores, it might be time to think about a better way to handle this aspect of execution. If you had your wish, how would you do it? Is it an automated system that lets players sign off on scores at the machine? Or perhaps you have an attendant come by to capture an electronic signature. The possibilities abound. Explore them.

With scoring already a major concern, next comes prize distribution. Everyone loves a good prize, but more importantly everyone wants the prize they were promised. If you use Excel or Access, you likely have to associate scores and the relative rank with a prize schedule. This causes stress for those involved because one data entry error, one sort error or one wrong cut and paste can cost the casino a considerable amount of money, as we learned from the well-known casino above. It’s also a huge burden for the people involved, with constant double-checking a must.

If you can make it through scoring and placement with ease, the next thing to consider is how to actually distribute the prizes. Most casinos issue winners certificates redeemable at the cage or hand out cash payments. This is where creative people often get stuck in simple tournament configurations for fear that the more complex the tournament, the more difficult it is to figure out who is getting paid and how much. But what if you had a system that automatically calculated player rank according to the rules and associated a payment for each place? You could expect faster association of cash amounts with player names.

Simply put, with an automated collection of scores, an accurate accounting system and flexible payment outputs, you could improve the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of your tournaments, not to mention avoid costly execution mistakes related to inaccurate scoring and prize distribution.

Think Differently
Executing a slot tournament doesn’t have to be a pain. If you can free yourself from the current processes you use, there’s hope to bring back excitement and profits to your events. In our next article, we’ll tackle how content can help create an immersive tournament experience, both for those playing and for those watching.

Jeff Jordan most recently served IGT as a Director in several roles—product strategy and marketing research, corporate strategic planning and strategic business development. Prior to IGT, Jordan worked at Bellagio as the Executive Director of Slot Operations and Marketing. He is a Principal at Jordan Gaming Consulting Group and can be reached at jjordanlv[at]gmail.com.

Krista Reiner is the Marketing Manager for Acres 4.0, a company dedicated to improving the appeal and profitability of casino gaming. Before joining Acres 4.0, she was the Managing Editor of Casino Enterprise Management. She can be reached at (701) 388-7377 or krista.reiner[at]acres4.com.