Casinos and Gaming

There are many new entertainment options competing for dollars and, as a result, consumer behavior is changing. Likewise, the gaming industry has evolved -- no longer competing solely with destination casinos but also with online gaming and other new forms of entertainment. Gaming companies can leverage AI, using the vast amounts of information they have on their customers to create and maintain better relationships and ultimately own their market.

See how gaming companies are leveraging AI.

AI and the Gaming Industry

Gaming companies collect massive amounts of data on their customers -- everything from how and where they play to what amenities they enjoy. Today’s gaming companies need to leverage this wealth of information to provide value to their customers and drive brand loyalty.

Loyalty and Marketing

Acquire new players
Understand a customer’s spending preferences
Maximize profits through targeted offers
Better understand and prevent player churn
Improve offer response from marketing efforts
Predict future player behavior as well as customer lifetime value

Risk Management

Assess credit risk of patrons and suppliers
Detect potential fraud among customers and employees
Enhance anti-money laundering capabilities
Ensure computer security keeps operations running smoothly

Operations

Forecast business needs for strategic planning purposes
Optimize the placement of equipment on the casino floor
Schedule staffing to account for peak and non-peak times
Determine competitive pricing
Retain employees in a tight hiring market
Optimize hospitality offerings such as lodging, food, and beverage

Loyalty and Marketing
- Acquire new players
- Understand a customer’s spending preferences
- Maximize profits through targeted offers
- Better understand and prevent player churn
- Improve offer response from marketing efforts
- Predict future player behavior as well as customer lifetime value
Risk Management
- Assess credit risk of patrons and suppliers
- Detect potential fraud among customers and employees
- Enhance anti-money laundering capabilities
- Ensure computer security keeps operations running smoothly
Operations
- Forecast business needs for strategic planning purposes
- Optimize the placement of equipment on the casino floor
- Schedule staffing to account for peak and non-peak times
- Determine competitive pricing
- Retain employees in a tight hiring market
- Optimize hospitality offerings such as lodging, food, and beverage

Use cases

Because the casino and gaming industry is unlike any other, the AI and machine learning use cases are unique. From ensuring that a player does not cheat (and get away with it) to optimizing a casino floor with ROI in mind, companies across the industry can rely on automated machine learning to glean actionable insights from their data.

Future player behavior

Understanding when a patron is likely to play next, how much they will play, and if they’ll use their offers allows casinos to better focus their marketing efforts. With AI and automated machine learning, gaming companies can make targeted marketing decisions — offering the right deal at the right time to the right audience in order to drive maximum spend at the establishment.
Lifetime value

Go beyond simply understanding the historical value of a player’s behavior and build machine learning models that capture what their behavior might be in the future. Using automated machine learning, companies can build better marketing programs, identifying players who are deemed more valuable and develop them into loyal customers.
Player churn

It costs significantly less to upsell an existing customer than to bring in a new customer. The right machine learning models can help do exactly that — identifying customers unlikely to play at the casino again, as well as why they might drop off, and providing the tools to retain them. The models built with automated machine learning can determine what offers are most likely to bring customers back, when to make those offers, and how to accurately target them.
Anti-money laundering

Many rule-based systems for identifying money laundering generate too many false positives, wasting time by investigating legitimate behavior. Predictive models can help minimize these false positives and focus resources on actual money laundering cases that need immediate attention, both internal and external.
Floor optimization

Using historical data, AI can help build models to understand why certain games perform the way they do, based on factors such as type or location. Use that valuable information to decide where to place games on the casino floor for optimal return.
Anti-cheating

AI can help gaming companies build models that detect cheating by quickly and automatically identifying suspicious behavior by either players or employees. This enables security teams to flag the behavior for further investigation.
Demand forecasting

Based on forecasts of how many players and guests will be at the property at a given time, predictive models built with automated machine learning can help determine when to schedule staff working hours and how to make the appropriate purchasing decisions for food, beverage, and merchandise.

DataRobot Can Help You With:

Casino marketing

Using DataRobot, casinos can better understand how marketing is driving play, spend, and loyalty. Models built in DataRobot help identify which players to market to, what offer works best, and what the impact of those offers will be. This helps optimize marketing dollars to measure offer response, understand customer behavior, and stay ahead of the competition.
Sports book

Sports gambling is a rapidly expanding gaming option that is being legalized across the U.S., including daily fantasy sports. DataRobot can help identify the optimal lines for games based on both team strength and likely behavior, forecast the amount likely to be gambled for a given event, and identify those players who show skill rather than luck in their bets.
Online gaming

With the increasing number of options in online gaming, companies are fighting for players’ attention against the rest of the entertainment economy. Based on a player’s behavior on a company’s site, DataRobot can increase their spend by making the right targeted offers and suggesting the most enticing games.
Casino operations

Use DataRobot to optimize the entire casino. Manage staffing levels based on forecasts that determine the amount of play expected during a given shift. Determine the optimal layout of a casino based on models that show how different games will perform in various locations.