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// PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // July/August 2016
ment officials, the Oregon Lottery deter-
mined the ticket should be honored and the
prize paid. TheLotter, which had provided
the service that allowed the man to buy the
winning ticket, now sees a golden oppor-
tunity to expand its business. The Oregon
Lottery Commission is expected to vote on
the rule changes in August.
Nevada Casinos Make Changes
to Attract Millennials
Manufactures nowadays are moving to a
more video game experience. It’s moving
to skill-based, it’s moving to to the Xbox
or the PlayStation, arcade games, pool,
beer pong, pool and shuffleboard to sports
book, and even a mini showroom with
UFC fights. Poker is still popular with the
younger generation. A mixture of a casino,
game room, and lounge, is being added as
they try to appeal to the nightclub crowd,
outside of a club.
Connecticut Casino Embraces
OnLine Gaming
With a crowded casino market in New
England competing for consumers’ gam-
bling dollars, Foxwoods Casino in Con-
necticut has entered the arena of on-line
gaming with its launch in April of Fox-
woodONLINE. The early returns on this
digital platform are encouraging, according
to Eric Pearson, vice president of gaming
and revenue enhancement.
Pearson said daily average usage (a key per-
formance metric) has doubled Foxwoods’
previous online initiatives. In-app purchases
and other digital avenues have created new
revenues, but the key driver is allowing on-
line players to win points or credits that can
be redeemed at the brick-and-mortar casino
for food, shopping, and hotel stays.
Online gambling for money is legal in
three states—New Jersey, Delaware and
Nevada—but casino operators are experi-
menting with gaming offerings to learn
what works and to begin to acquire brand
loyalty in the belief that additional states
will legalize it. In 2015, California, Illinois,
Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania intro-
duced online gaming legislation. Connecti-
cut considered a bill to legalize and regulate
online daily fantasy sports, but the measure
was defeated.
Online gambling around the world is pro-
jected by some research agencies to be a $56
billion a year market by 2018; the United
States is expected to represent one-third of
that total.
Gaming Industry can Show the Way
in Livestreaming
As businesses enter the rapidly evolv-
ing arena of live streaming, they may be
well-served to study the lead of the gaming
industry. Facebook, Twitter, and Google
collectively are expected to garner 44% of
all display advertising revenue in 2016 while
other media companies struggle to identify
profitable new revenue models. Meanwhile,
game publishers make billions using novel
livestreaming approaches.
Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, and
YouTube were live streaming pioneers, but
media channels such as Facebook, Snapchat,
Twitter, and other platforms are undertaking
initiatives to create more live video for their
sites. Facebook, for example, is spending
more than $50 million to encourage media
companies and celebrities to live stream on
its platform.
The live stream gaming industry offers valu-
able lessons for those hoping to build their
own brands on social platforms. Among
those lessons:
It Takes Three Years to Build A Following:
A recent analysis of more than 4,000 streams
on Twitch across 11 popular game channels
demonstrated that building an audience
might take at least three years before signifi-
cant returns are generated. More than 75%
of statistical outlier channels were created
during or prior to 2013. The gaming chan-
nels that fell in the lower 95th percentile of
total followers were predominantly created
since 2014. Organizations should be patient
with their live streaming programs.
Followers Lead to Compounding Returns
On Views:
As a Twitch streamer builds an audience,
there is a corresponding compounding
growth on the number of views the chan-
nel receives. A 10% increase in followers
correlates with the same 10% growth in total
views. The faster a channel attracts followers,
the faster it increases its views on Twitch.
This may be attributable to platform-specific
algorithms, which raise the most popular
channels to the top, but those same choices
probably would happen on any platform.
Tech Companies Invade Hollywood
Paramount. Warner. Universal. Three legacy
names synonymous with Hollywood.
Apple. Facebook. Google. Three global tech
giants that may become the dominant new
names in entertainment.
In recent months, Apple and three of the
company’s principal competitors—Google,
Facebook, and Alibaba—have increased
their investments in Hollywood content.
Google’s YouTube has launched a new
“originals” division that is combining its
homegrown talent with mainstream TV
producers and filmmakers to upgrade its
content. Facebook is encouraging—and
compensating—celebrities to live-stream
video on its platform. Alibaba, the Chinese
e-commerce company, is licensing, financ-
ing, and developing feature films.
These enterprises have embraced Holly-
wood for two reasons. 1) The success that
Netflix and Amazon have experienced by
producing exclusive, high-quality program-
ming is undeniable. Netflix has become
a $40 billion business, has attracted 75
million subscribers, and has won Golden
Globes and Emmy awards. Amazon’s move
into original video has helped Amazon
Prime add tens of millions of customers
and win awards of its own. 2) Entertain-
ment content is a growing opportunity.
The dissolution of the cable TV bundle has
fueled a battle to win audiences now free
from their old provider contracts.
Alibaba, Apple, Facebook, and Google are
aggressively pursuing this new business