Gamblers play Buffalo Link at Red Rock Casino Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022.
As he meandered through Red Rock Resort, Aaron Bettale gravitated toward a slot machine featuring animated video of stampeding buffaloes and explosions of gold coins, ringing bells and the refrain of a disembodied voice exclaiming, “Buffalo.”
“I like the flashy stuff,” Bettale, who is in his 20s, said as he examined the Buffalo Link machine. “I don’t like the ones that just have the three sevens.”
For casino operators, gamblers like Bettale, who recently moved to Las Vegas from Colorado, represent the coveted young adult demographic. The hope is young players can be cultivated into lifelong casino patrons.
The average age of U.S. casino customers declined from about 50 in 2019 to 43 last year, according to the American Gaming Association. And 25% of casino patrons were under age 29, the group noted.
The trend can at least partly be attributed to the coronavirus pandemic, said Jon Hanlin, a senior vice president of commercial strategy and business analytics for slot manufacturer Aristocrat Gaming.
After movie theaters, concert halls, nightclubs and other entertainment venues closed during the early months of the pandemic in 2020, casinos were some of the first to reopen, Hanlin said.
“That created a new bubble of people who had never frequented casinos before,” Hanlin said. Sign-ups for casino players club cards have skyrocketed among 21- to 35-year-olds, he said.
Red Rock has recently introduced a number of games geared toward young adults, including a skills-based offering called Megamatch-Jelly Kingdom, a cross between a video game — similar to Candy Crush Saga — and a traditional slot machine.
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