Gaming entrepreneur Acres calls on casinos to cease nickel-and-diming their prospects | Casinos & Gaming

A Las Vegas gaming entrepreneur has a easy message to on line casino firms to jump-start profitability — stop nickel-and-diming your playing prospects and give you incentives for them to spend extra after they go to.

Acres Technology founder and CEO John Acres, who has made a profession of growing technological programs to encourage elevated and accountable recreation play, instructed the Bob Maheu “First Wednesday” group assembly on the Ahern Hotel that the gaming trade should pivot from its present pricing trajectory if it desires to return to file profitability.

“Las Vegas needs to change, but also what we need to give our casino managers permission to change,” Acres stated in his 30-minute tackle.

“Right now, most of our casinos are suffering for revenue and without fresh ideas, without fresh technology, they turn to what has been described as price gouging, surge pricing for bottles of water, expensive food, resort fees, parking fees, all the others that you’re all familiar with. But those are symptoms of our problem. Our real problem is we’ve lost our bravery. We’ve lost our courage. We’ve lost the willingness to take risk.”

Studies participant psychology

Acres, who’s credited because the inventor of participant monitoring, progressive jackpots and immediate bonuses and has spent 50 years finding out participant psychology, illustrated government risk-taking in an outline of how he first approached former Wynn Resorts Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn in convincing his firm to purchase right into a progressive jackpot system when Acres was 27.

“I used to be in his workplace and I made a proposal to him, a verbal proposal, nothing written. And he goes, ‘I think I like what you’re saying. What’s it going to take to make it occur?’ And I stated, ‘Well, it’s going to value about $100,000.’ And this might have been in 1981, in order that’s like $300,000 now. ‘And I need about a third of it up front.’

“He didn’t say, ‘Well, can you do it cheaper?’ He did say, ‘How do I get you to do it better? Whatever you’re doing, I want you to do more. Whatever you’re thinking, I want you to think bigger. I want you to think audaciously. I want you to think past what’s possible into what could possibly come true. I want you to dream about what’s going to happen.’ And he picked up the phone on the intercom, called his secretary and says, ‘I need a check for $35,000.’ Ten minutes later, it’s in his office. Remember, we have zero documentation on this deal, zero.”

Acres stated Wynn’s method towards offering a greater buyer expertise is what’s totally different from company possession of casinos now from when one high boss or household may decide swiftly.

Dressed in a pink University of Indiana T-shirt in assist of a soccer program that’s additionally making an audacious run at a university soccer championship, Acres stated on line casino firms have forgotten easy methods to dream and easy methods to take dangers.

“Which is really weird,” he stated. “You’d think that people that run casinos would be familiar with risk. But it’s really not their fault. It’s ours. Because we expect our publicly traded companies to produce consistent results.”

Acres stated in “the old Vegas ways,” on line casino operators didn’t nickel-and-dime their prospects, they created an setting by which the shopper felt particular.

“Those things offset the inevitable losses that you’re going to encounter when you gamble because the truth is, if players don’t lose, casinos can’t survive,” he stated.

Players “gamble to escape everyday life, to be for a moment someone beyond what they are, to take a risk, to feel like a winner. Ultimately, what we sell, that we’ve forgotten we sell, is self-esteem. We make players feel better about themselves.”

Acres praised Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Mike Dreitzer as an innovator who can carry change to the gaming trade by simplifying, reforming or, in some instances, eliminating present rules.

Embracing experimentation

He stated he expects Dreitzer will embrace experimentation as an alternative of “protecting against anything bad happening” after taking workplace final summer season.

Acres additionally addressed prediction markets that made headlines in 2025.

“I think that one of the first problems we have is that we as an industry see every new idea as a threat,” he stated. “If I were Nevada and I was fighting against prediction markets, I would be preparing a way to tax the hell out of it if I can’t get rid of it, to make sure that we make our money, that we put them on equal footing with the casinos. At the end of the day, the prediction market is just another set of odds.”

The state is embroiled in lawsuits from firms providing prediction markets after making an attempt to ban them with cease-and-desist orders.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at [email protected] or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.