Casinos embrace esports as they work to understand it
By Wayne Parry, AP
Casinos are slowly embracing competitive video game tournaments as a way to help their bottom lines, but the money is coming from renting hotel rooms to the young players and selling them food and drinks, not from turning them into gamblers.
Like most other ways gambling halls have tried to attract millennials and their disposable income, it hasn’t been easy. Atlantic City was first city in the nation to adopt skill-based slot machines to woo millennials but bailed on them after a few months when the response was underwhelming.
Competitive video game tournaments, known as esports, are a growing industry around the world. The fast-paced action, vivid graphics and often violent on-screen action is catnip to millennials, the audience casinos are targeting as their core slot players grow old and die.
