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CASINOSAURUS REX

Regular Gambling Insider contributor Paul Sculpher assesses what would happen if a UK casino today were to be run the same way as in 1994

Recently I was trawling through the murk of LinkedIn, as recruitment people are wont to do, when I came across an actual casino dinosaur. Now I think we all cling onto elements of our early careers as being the right way to do things, but this was a genuine “side bets are bad, open door is bad, technology is bad, all management since the 1990’s are useless number crunchers” Casinosaurus Rex individual. It got me to thinking – what if you ran a UK casino right now, today, in the same way as you’d have run one in the last year the old C. Rex appeared to think they were “properly” run, circa 1994?

What would happen? There are, to say the least, a few problems. I think the first one is pure commercials. I don’t think anyone would disagree that a good proportion of casino trade back in the 1990’s was from, shall we say, dubious sources. I was only a dealer (m’lud!) so I can say without fear of prosecution that I was 99% sure some of the bigger punters in the casino I trained in were criminals of some sort.

The idea of running source of funds checks for AML purposes in our 1994 casino, plonked into 2021, would be trouble. Not only would you never see the genuinely suspect players again, you would of course lose a good swathe of your non-criminal players, due to unwillingness to provide the information, laziness or fear of the taxman.

So you’ve sliced out a good lump of your better players. That’s not the end of it, though, because you’re really going to struggle to replace them. You’re still in 24-hour rule territory, you see, so anyone who wants to visit has to have signed up 24 hours in advance. That kills the possibility of impulse visits unless you’ve a member in your party who can sign in their guests – although impulse visits aren’t likely unless people are walking right past, as you can’t advertise, not even a website. Back then all you could offer was prescribed sized classified adverts for the restaurant.

The catering efforts are an interesting question. Casino catering in the UK has been downgraded over the years, from A La Carte menus cooked by serious chefs, to something in some cases not far north of a Wetherspoons menu. That’s not universally the case, but both the largest two chains of casinos have broadly standardised their menus and you won’t find too many kitchen workers paid a long way above minimum wage. I’m somewhat split on this issue – for smaller sites, I think you just need to have a food offer as fuel for gamers, but there’s still a sliver of market for customers who both want fine food and will game to any extent. One thing’s for sure, you’re not going to make significant profit from your upscale food offer, so it had better lead to crossover income.

Your other issue is the bar experience. A swanky bar is a key part of the process of turning people from non visitors to