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Originally Posted by Trixie2
For those of you who haven't been out in a while... El Dorado has put an electronic craps table in at Harrah's, ballys, Flamingo, PH and not sure of Caesars and Paris as I don't pass thru there gaming sections often. Management friends said this is the plan going forward to help lower wage/benefit costs. (electronic craps drops from 4 employees to 1)
In this economic market and the fact that Biden and Walsh are pushing the PRO Act making it easier for workers to unionize - can you really blame companies for trying to downsize their labor force???
Imagine dropping, round numbers, 40 poker room staff, 40 craps dealers. just for starters... across multiple properties.
It's more about attracting the new generation to gaming--a generation accustomed to doing everything on a computer/phone/tablet/game screen. Stadium gaming, as some call it, takes up more real estate per player than many of the table games it replaces, at least now (and real estate is expensive). Some of that is no doubt due to COVID spacing. But you can get a similar experience by gaming online without getting dressed up and leaving home (and hotel, travel and dining expenses, etc.). I don't know how many newer players it will attract above and beyond what a casino would attract anyway. And most of the whales who are the lion's share of a casino's gaming revenue won't trust it and prefer to gamble in private, semi-private or exclusive settings. So table games are here to stay for the foreseeable future. A number of years ago some casinos experimented with dealer-less poker. Players sat around a group of terminals playing poker on the casino floor. It didn't catch on but online poker did. The lure of online poker had to do with convenience, not computerization, flashing lights or sound effects.
There's also the effect of throwing the dice in craps, handling the cards in baccarat and poker, playing with and handling chips, last second wagering in roulette and craps. All of those have an addictive effect on players (although, pushing buttons can too). This is part of the enjoyment at table games absent from stadium gaming.
The savings in employees is real and part of the motivation, but it's not at a 4:1 ratio for dealers. Blackjack and roulette and the other games offered use fewer dealers. There's additional savings in pit bosses, refills, etc., too. But they need technicians to maintain the equipment, and when one setup goes south, it takes a lot of seats with it (as compared to a slot machine, which takes only one). It's probably closer to 2:1 overall, maybe 2.5. But how many stadium gaming set-ups is a casino going to install? Not that many, imo. Reducing the number of employees is a huge plus, but it has nothing to do with Joe Biden or Marty Walsh. Companies do that every chance they get (always have, always will) and most casino workers in Vegas and other big markets are already unionized. But don't let facts get in the way of injecting a political agenda into a debate.