Casino Enterprise Management

When Melco Crown Entertainment revealed in late 2007 that it was seeking a software solution that would tie in every form of entertainment on offer at its planned City of Dreams casino resort in Macau, there were many in the industry that said it simply couldn’t be done. Technical solutions and infrastructure provider Gaming Support disagreed—and was quick to offer up its JackpotJunction XL digital signage technology for the flagship development.

“The Melco team was by no means a newcomer to the digital signage arena,” said Nick Hogan, vice president of sales and business development for Gaming Support. “The operations people had used a lot of digital signage in the past, and they contracted engineering consulting group JBA to manage the tender. So, it was clear from the first day where the burden of proof resided. We had a highly educated consumer with an incredibly detailed and challenging requirement set. This would be a ‘no nonsense’ exercise.”

Located on the Cotai Strip, a piece of reclaimed land about five miles from the center of Macau, City of Dreams markets itself as a “unique integrated resort combining electrifying entertainment, an amazing array of accommodation, regional and international dining as well as designer brand shopping.” Opened on June 1 with a price tag of more than $2.1 billion, City of Dreams also features 420,000 square feet of gaming space in its casino with hundreds of plasma screen televisions throughout the property.

“Melco presented the tender with a simple, catch-all vision,” Hogan explained. “It wanted the most engaging digital signage system in the industry.”

The complete raft of digital signage functionality included state-of-the-art playback, collaborative content management, intelligent bandwidth management, architectural neutrality and a wide spectrum of application integration. “The brief called for total system integration and total resort coverage,” Hogan said. “Every square inch of the facility would have a promotional touch-point serving video content interlaced with system data. Whether you were dining, lounging in your room, strolling through the shops or gambling, you were being served.”

“The concept was heavy cross-promotion of all internal franchises,” he continued. “The non-gaming businesses were to be pulled on to the gaming floor and the casino action was to supercharge every corner of the resort. The basic idea was to light the place on fire.” This idea­­ extends to the external digital signs. The most eye-cathing of which is located on a key road junction on the edge of the resort and is some 20 meters or more in the air.

One of the more challenging requirements was that every low voltage system in the resort had to ride a single TCP/IP network. In terms of broadcast distribution, Gaming Support was asked to utilize the Deuromedia IPTV system that City of Dreams had selected for its in-room entertainment. The plan was to combine the core advantages of streaming designs with those of matrix architectures in the form of a groundbreaking hybrid based on IPTV. “Although we had done some IPTV work in the past, the proposed architecture was completely new, and we were biting our nails a bit,” Hogan explained. “However, after a few meetings the nerves gave way to ambition. We knew that Melco was on to a technological game changer. If we could pull it off, we’d have a far more robust, cost-effective and flexible distribution option from which Melco and scores of other clients could benefit enormously. So, together with our strategic partner, Alpha Video, we threw a lot of engineering horsepower at having this capability in the pocket for the pre-award proof-of-concept testing.”

Gaming Support’s JackpotJunction XL is a digital signage technology that fuses high impact audio, video and environmental broadcasts with gaming data. One of four product lines that have been designed for different sized operations, the system allows users to script and serve templates that fuse general broadcast elements such as video files, static images, live television and real-time feeds with gaming data. The product also features a web-based collaborative content management suite that enables a large body of users to contribute to the broadcast programming.

JackpotJunction XL is perfectly suited for large, diverse, highly sophisticated organizations, and it has become the system of choice for industry giants such as Harrah’s Entertainment, Genting International and Holland Casino. “In reviewing the competitive landscape, it was clear to the Melco team that JackpotJunction XL was a product that it could not afford to ignore,” Hogan said.

After an 18-month process that saw a “knee-high” formal bid, multiple proof-of-concept tests, countless meetings and Melco managers flying around the world to visit references, Gaming Support’s JackpotJunction XL was selected as the system for City of Dreams. “In almost 15 years of selling automation to casinos, I have never participated in a more brutally meticulous tender,” Hogan noted.

“Everyone on deck was a professional and every word counted,” he added. “The end game was that Melco was not going to take a leap of faith. There was too much riding on execution. So, it simply grilled us on every front, making absolutely certain that we had the wherewithal to deliver.”

JackpotJunction XL soft launched at City of Dreams several weeks prior to opening, and Gaming Support described the project as a “great advertisement for the system” and has used the installation to show off what it can do. “When City of Dreams opened, we invited several high-end Asian customers to come and take a look,” Hogan said. “You can argue that this was a bit of a gamble, but we knew where we stood, and it said a lot about our confidence. Sure enough, these clients took notice.”

“It demos extremely well, partially because the place is just so spectacular,” he continued. “It’s such a visually engaging resort, and it has so much going on technologically that you can’t help but say ‘wow’ when you walk in.

“When these operators discovered that it was our stuff driving the whole show, that it’s all on a single network, delivered using the latest and greatest distribution technology and integrated from tip to tail with all core systems, they were simply blown away. So, as a reference site, it just doesn’t get any better. We immediately walked into two other deals based predominantly on what customers saw at City of Dreams.”

In addition to the JackpotJunction range, Rotterdam-based Gaming Support also offers electric signs, light-emitting diode (LED) displays, jackpot controllers, gaming management systems and a wide range of bonusing peripherals. The company also continues to develop JackpotJunction “very aggressively.”

“First and foremost is incorporating broader and deeper support for value-adding bonusing technologies, whether internal or external,” Hogan explained. “As it stands, our interface library is already five times the size of our nearest competitor’s. Still, you can never have enough of this, and we remain hugely committed to supporting every new technology that hits the market. No matter what the product, it will be infinitely more effective when used in conjunction with the best broadcasting technology that money can buy.”

Gaming Support is also putting an increasing emphasis upon table solutions. “Although there are a lot of challenges on this front, the status quo in table-side digital signage is exceedingly weak,” Hogan noted. “So we’re committed to turning it on its head.”

Gaming Support, which also has an office in Las Vegas, has also expanded significantly is in “wayfinding,” which involves touchscreen supported interactive maps of casino floorplans. Similar to the maps displayed in shopping malls, the screen gives players a list of available games or services and, with one click, will display directions to a given destination, complete with denominational information, statistical data and real-time jackpot values. “We’ve done some pretty awesome interactive stuff around the industry, and it’s definitely receiving a lot of attention,” Hogan said. “We’ve invested a lot of time and effort on the fundamentals, namely building out an interactive scripting layer that’s both stable and highly adaptive. So, as the application requirements in this realm mature, we’ll be better positioned than anyone to fulfill them.”

Gaming Support revealed that focus and flexibility have been big keys in securing its position as the go-to provider for digital signage solutions. “Most, if not all of our competitors have viewed and continue to view digital signage as a means to an end,” Hogan said. “They view it as a cost of business—a way to leverage slot machines, casino management systems and controller sales. So, they’ve designed in proprietary hardware and inflexible architectures, acquired or licensed for resale technologies that lie outside of their competency ranges, and peddled product that forces dependencies. This is entirely antithetical to what we do.”

“For us, digital signage is a core business,” he continued. “We’re in it for the long haul, and we enter every deal with the knowledge that the customer is not only smart enough to see through a leveraged sale but also capable of teaching us something critically important about our field. This focus differentiates us from every other player in the space, and we will not be abandoning it anytime soon.”

Gaming Support will be exhibiting its complete product line at the Las Vegas Convention Center for Global Gaming Expo (G2E) and at Earl’s Court for January’s International Gaming Expo (IGE) in London.

Alan Campbell is a U.K.-based journalist with more than a decade of experience covering the global casino, bingo and coin-op amusements markets for some of the world’s most well-known and respected publications. He may be reached at yankeecampbell[at]yahoo.co.uk.