Casinos are sometimes bought and sold. Local casinos can be bought by a chain, or a chain can sell a casino to another chain or even local owners in some cases. A player was curious about what that could mean for them:
If a new company takes over a casino, can they affect the slots? For example, change the payout percentage? Or in any way affect the slots?
Sherrie
New casino owners can take a look at slot machines and decide whether the payouts they’re offering make sense for them or if they need to be adjusted. Those adjustments could be higher or lower, depending on a casino’s overall philosophy on a looser or tighter casino floor.
Casinos have the ability to choose which payout option they want on a given slot, among the choices (usually around a half dozen) a game maker makes available to them. So it is within their control, at least among the presets they can choose from, and also within the restrictions of any regulations that may establish a floor (or ceiling!) on slot payouts.
What normally will see changes more quickly, especially when it comes to larger operators when smaller operators are bought, are comps. Comps are more visible and open, and already often change regularly based on a casino’s given calculations. Many larger operators, because of the allure of being able to gamble all sort of places and build towards a larger tier, don’t think they need to try as hard to woo players with comps.
So the end result is that smaller operators with locally focused operations will tend to be on the more generous side than those who are following a national corporate policy. When a smaller casino is rolled up into a larger operator, one of the easiest costs to cut is the comp budget.
In the end, it really depends on who buys the casino, how they run their business and what they think players should get. If they do make changes it will probably take a bit since each machine will have to be opened up and updated in most markets. But it certainly is within their control, and we’d expect that those settings would get reviewed as part of the acquisition.
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