Mohegan: LAND-BASED CASINOS CAN GO HAND-IN-HAND WITH ONLINE GAMING

WORDS BY JESSICA WELMAN

Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment speaks to Canadian Gaming Business about the relationship between online gaming and land-based casinos and breaks down whether the former is a threat to its Fallsview Casino Resort.

Once upon a time, in the not-too-distant past, brick-and-mortar casino operators thought online gambling was coming to ruin their business. Now, many consider online casinos and sportsbooks as an extension of their business, appealing to an entirely different audience. For Mohegan Sun and its Ontario land-based casinos though, the relationship is not linear, it is circular. And the idea of cannibalization? Well, they don’t buy it.

“Online gaming has been alive and well in the province of Ontario for probably 15, if not 16 years,” Niagara Casinos President Richard Taylor noted. “To say it's now going to start to cannibalize our business? Well, if it was, it would have already done so. So we don't believe that there will be significant cannibalization, to the opposite, we think that this is going to be accretive to our business.”

Mohegan’s approach isn’t about thinking of online gambling purely as a new, additive market, it is about thinking through how the two can work together to grow the offering Fallsview can offer its customers.

For example, any patrons with a Momentum customer loyalty membership from Fallsview can earn loyalty points playing on the PlayFallsview online casino and online sports betting sites, both of which soft-launched in August. The opportunity extends beyond loyalty points though, which is why the digital arm and the Fallsview brass are working together to create a unique experience rooted in retail in Ontario.

“The way that Mohegan Digital was set up is really to build a digital brand that is complementary to the retail brand in each of our markets. So here in Connecticut it’s Mohegan Sun Casino, up in Ontario, it's PlayFallsview,” explained Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment President of Digital Gaming Rich Roberts. “[Mohegan Digital] was to be complementary to the business, complementary to the brand, complementary to the team. One as a way to monetize our players when they're not at the casino, but also as a way for us to acquire new players.”

Taylor echoed Roberts’ excitement about not just the launch of online gambling but how the two groups can work together to better one another.

“This is the next iteration of gaming,” Taylor explained. “And we're certainly pleased as a land-based operator just to be part of this and this gives us an opportunity to keep connected with our customers.”

That level of interaction with the customers is also, in some ways, incredibly useful for market research. Certainly, it makes it clear what is working on mobile gambling apps. It can also inform brickand-mortar (locations) about what should be on the gaming floor.

“Ideally, we'd like to get in a position where we know exactly what our customers are doing while they're here at Fallsview Casino, Niagara Casino and what they're doing from a digital perspective and to be able to trend that consolidated play. What games are they playing online? Do we have those games here? What are the setups that we need to do so that if we want to translate that customer from a digital standpoint into the bricks and mortar, we've got similar games that we know those customers want to play and vice versa,” Taylor explained.

Certainly, sports betting is part of the plans as well, but Roberts admits that Mohegan Sun and Fallsview are committed to putting casino first as an offering.

“Our focus is all casino games. We know what the profitability is on casino games versus sportsbook,” he admitted. “And so, the sportsbook is important to our business, but the casino games are the lifeblood of our business. So getting people to play on their phones on property is not really a priority for us. Our priority is to get those who are playing on their mobile devices onto property.”

As Roberts noted, the plans for PlayFallsview and how the digital and the retail interact is not to get people on property just to play on their phones. It is about using the phone to persuade users to come to the casino.

Citing numbers from the results so far at Mohegan Sun Casino Resort in Connecticut, Roberts noted that in excess of 30% of customers who signed up for the mobile app were not Momentum cardholders. What is so exciting about the Mohegan Sun-branded online casino is that these customers are both signing up for the app despite not being familiar with the property. More importantly, though, these users signed up and then eventually came to casino to experience the brand in a land-based manner.

The brand and experience Fallsview and its idyllic location on Niagara Falls offers is how Mohegan Digital can craft a brand that appeals to Ontario. Leaning into the unique experience the property offers, one defined by service and entertainment, will hopefully give them a leg up over other online gaming operators whose relationship with users stops once their phone is out of their hands.