Traditional casinos to embrace eSports
The fast paced growth of eSports has turned casinos to try and include them in order to attract millennials to their business.
US.- Millennials have been a tough target for casinos to lure into their venues and several attempts to attract them have failed in the past. The most recent strategy for traditional gaming venues seems to be to try and embrace eSports and take advantage of their major success and fast-paced growth.
As reported by the Associated Press, Caesars Entertainment is one of the companies that has already taken a shot at including eSports, as their Atlantic City operation hosted a tournament that drew nearly 900 competitors and spectators. Kevin Ortzman, Atlantic City regional president for the company, said that their hospitality offerings “spiked” during the event but the gambling side wasn’t altered.
“Everybody’s still trying to figure out, how do you make this appealing for the consumer and make sense for the business? How do we all profit from this?” he said, and commented on the possibility that eSports competitions could be the way to attract millenials just like “their parents and grandparents went there to play slot machines.”
David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, believes that the lack of discretionary income and free time among “people starting their careers or families” may be afecting the poor gambling results in that age span.
“The big question is whether people who are 40 or 20 now will begin to play casino games as they get older,” he said and commented: “This isn’t a given.”
Newzoo, a company that analyses the eSports market, projected the sector will generate US$700 million in 2017, including media rights, ticket and merchandise sales, brand partnerships and game maker investments. They also expect eSports to continue growing in the next few years and predicted that the figure will break the US$1.5 billion mark by 2019.
Wall Street agrees on the growth potential in the sector as Deloitte Global reported the worldwide eSports market to be last year at US$500 million, up US$100 million since 2015, and calculated a global audience of nearly 150 million people a year.
