Operator News

ICE – Roulette 73 goes after millennials

By Phil - 3 February 2017

As Roulette 73 gets ready for February’s ICE, Freddy Kurili, the company’s sales manager, explains why their new spin on a classic game could be set to revolutionise the table gaming market and attract millennials through aspirational gaming.

Slovenia-based Roulette 73 is set to attend ICE this February, where the company hopes to herald a renaissance of the table game, utilising a revised and improved layout of numbers and their sequences, more betting options, alongside a higher payout. While bottom line is probably the key seller – casinos will benefit from a higher hold as a result of increasing the range of numbers on the wheel – the company firmly believes the key to successfully promoting Roulette 73 will be through educating its players, ensuring that demand for the game will be player-led.

“From our point of view, with the millennials, we hope to help shape a generation of informed players, able to appreciate the finer points of a game that will grow with them,” said Freddy Kurili, sales manager at Roulette 73.

To this end the company has already hosted a number of seminars and created a series of educational YouTube videos, in addition to crafting a social media campaign which aims to reach demographics unfamiliar with roulette.

“Our goal is to help players access the game, so that when they enter a casino they will know how to participate and will be able to trust their knowledge,” Kurili added. “Additionally, they will also be secure that in 10 to 15 years time, the game will not have changed and we believe that this too will contribute to player retention.”

The solution to cornering the millennial market remains something of a holy grail within the industry, but Roulette 73 believes it has struck the right balance between novelty, accessibility and ongoing appeal.

“Youngsters like changes, this is a part of modern culture, it is important to give consumers something new, to stop them getting bored with the existing offering,” said Kurili. With this in mind, he contends that the movement towards slot machines in preference to table games may be counter-productive, since the former do not offer the level of depth needed to retain players.

“Our message is that if you want to be someone, if you want to show your knowledge, choose roulette or you can play on your computer or mobile, just tapping the keyboard,” he explained. “The latter will not be enough to keep players coming back and this is why such games fall into a vicious cycle where each new product faces a shorter and shorter shelf life.”

Mr. Kurili also proposes that many players miss the refined atmosphere often associated with classic European casinos: “It’s like haute couture, while you can now buy designer brands on the highstreet, if you want to be someone, then you go to Paris. “This is an illustration of the argument against dumming down your product offering, the fashion houses of Paris have survived by refusing to compromise on their chic and elegance and therein lies our aim – to educate consumers that roulette represents classic, classy gaming at its finest.”

With the company built around a single product, Kurili feels its focus on roulette has improved both the quality of its product and the strength of the Roulette 73 brand overall. “It’s a question of if you want to be a specialist or a jack of all trades, you can be an expert in something or average in everything,” he concluded. “We are the roulette specialists and we plan to be the one and only roulette specialist within the next few years.”