Casino Enterprise Management

Gaming Support—the name says it all. Not since General Motors incorporated has a company had a more apropos moniker. With product lines for several areas of a gaming enterprise—and the service to prop them up—Gaming Support is aptly named. With electric signs, LED displays, jackpot controllers, gaming systems and distribution rights to several name-brand gaming products found on every casino floor, Gaming Support has a solution for almost any need an operator can express. Based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and with offices in Las Vegas, the company has come a long way since founder Lucien van Linden raised the capital to buy the assets of Otimex and created a company to offer solutions to the challenges he had seen in his 15 years in the gaming industry.

In the Beginning
Van Linden didn’t come to the gaming industry by happenstance. His father was director of a Dutch gaming company, and van Linden’s first professional turn in the industry came in 1986 when he was hired as a slot technician for Holland Casino Rotterdam. During his tenure at Holland Casino, van Linden rose through the ranks into a management role. With a nose for troubleshooting—and a demonstrated problem-solving ability—he was approached by Mikohn to work in the European market, and he ultimately served as Mikohn Europe’s managing director. The move from the operator side to the supplier side of the equation put van Linden in the advantageous position of having seen the industry from both sides of the table.

In 2000, the opportunity arose for van Linden to acquire Otimex, a technical service provider. In a bit of serendipity, Otimex had been the technical service provider for Holland Casino; in fact, all of Holland Casino’s slot operations servicing had been outsourced to the company. Van Linden raised the capital and acquired Otimex, which he renamed Gaming Support. As managing director of the company, van Linden began to expand Gaming Support’s operations to include gaming peripherals along with its technical service offerings.

By 2002, Holland Casino realized the benefits of bringing its outsourced technical support in-house and acquired a 40 percent interest in Gaming Support. This symbiotic relationship provided Holland Casino with a seat at the table in developing business strategies and provided Gaming Support with both the financing to expand and a 14-site test bed in which it could develop its products. In the eight years since Gaming Support grew from the assets of Otimex, the company has expanded from fewer than 10 full-time employees to a stable of more than 130 industry professionals.

According to one of those professionals, Marketing Manager Damien Connolly, this close relationship with Holland Casino is what really sets Gaming Support apart from its competition. “We hear the ‘pain points’ facing real live gaming operators,” he said. “As we work so closely with Holland Casino, we think that we understand the needs of casino operators better than any other supplier in the gaming peripheral market. This level of understanding enables Gaming Support to translate those pain points into solutions that will solve their needs. … Our frontline staff knows the gaming industry, as they are on the gaming floor of operationally live casinos every single day of the year. This knowledge is collected and fed into our centralized knowledge management system.”

“Short of operating our own casino,” he added, “we feel that we know more about casinos than any other supplier of gaming peripherals anywhere in the industry.”

The facets of Gaming Support’s products and services run the gamut from physical infrastructure to technical solutions, and the company’s expertise is more diverse than the average company’s. Rather than focus on one specific set of solutions, van Linden’s hands-on time in the industry gave him an understanding of what operators need: solutions that go beyond just systems, infrastructure or service. This all-encompassing nature affords operators the luxury of having a single solutions provider come in and solve many of the challenges that cross lines between products and systems.

Signs
Gaming Support’s design department is led by Creative Director Rob Prins, formerly the signs art director for Mikohn Europe. The company has a complete sign design and manufacturing operation within its four walls. From conceptual design, through CAD drawing and metal shaping, to final wiring and quality testing, Gaming Support builds, installs and renovates hundreds of signs each year in casinos across Europe, Africa and Asia. (The service is not currently available in the Americas.)

Gaming Support works with properties and original equipment manufacturers to provide the eye-catching signs you’d expect to find in a casino. That bright, wild design atop your favorite bank of slot machines across the pond? There’s a good chance Gaming Support worked with the manufacturer to design and build the signage that goes with the game theme. In fact, Gaming Support goes above and beyond the game theme, working with casinos to build signage that matches a property’s interior design and themes.

From the denomination signs that lead the player to his or her games to the informational and promotional signs that are ubiquitous on any gaming floor, Gaming Support can design it and make it—and they’ve got the portfolio to prove it.

Standards
They’re called standards for a reason: They are standard issue in any physical casino. Gaming Support’s line of standards includes in-house products manufactured to a property’s specifications, and the distribution rights to some of the most recognizable names in the industry.

Gaming Support’s Eureka LED displays bring the bright excitement of dynamic information to any property, and it is here that Gaming Support and Eureka stand out in the industry. Whether a casino has two or 200 LED displays, Gaming Support’s Eureka LEDs can connect into the property’s computer network, making it easy for staff to manage and update the LED displays individually or all at once. And with Gaming Support’s technical savvy close at hand, an operator can rest assured that the displays and computer network will work together seamlessly from Day 1.

Gaming Support’s jackpot controllers work with all major slot and table protocols. With a master controller capability of managing 32 slave controllers, and each controller managing 32 slot machines, a property can operate up to 1,024 machines on a single jackpot controller.

In addition to in-house equipment, Gaming Support’s Dutch office also serves as a distributor for casino chair providers Gasser and Classico Seating. The head office distributes table games and slot and table accessories, and with a warehouse of more than 10,000 accessories, Gaming Support probably carries whatever it is that’s missing on your casino floor.

Systems
Casino infrastructure isn’t the only priority for Gaming Support. The company’s systems offerings are both innovative and exciting for the operator—and the player. Gaming Support offers three systems that are sure to make a difference on any operator’s bottom line: JackpotJunction, BonusBox and BaseSys Gaming Management System.

JackpotJunction
JackpotJunction is a digital signage technology that fuses high-impact audio, video and environmental broadcasts with gaming data. The four-product line includes JackpotJunction Sunrise, a bank-level management and promotion system for slot manufacturers; JackpotJunction Lite, a bank-level management and promotion system for smaller operators; JackpotJunction Pro, a venue-level management and promotion system for medium-sized operators; and JackpotJunction XL, a multi-site management and promotion system for enterprise-class operators.

The systems allow for user-defined backgrounds (motion video, static images, live TV, etc.) and script-in gaming overlays (jackpot values, bonus multiples, tournament status, etc.). JackpotJunction’s simplicity allows operators to connect systems, controllers, machines and tables, import the gaming data, schedule broadcasts, and begin using the system.

According to Connelly, JackpotJunction is the industry’s most widely installed gaming-enabled digital signage product. Clients range from giants like Harrah’s Entertainment, Genting International and Holland Casino to small, standalone venues.

Since its introduction in 2001, Gaming Support has seen the JackpotJunction line find its place in the industry, with 98 percent of JackpotJunction clients augmenting their initial configurations via expansion or the introduction of incremental functionality. Player reception has also been positive, with casinos’ bottom lines—and focus group analysis—lending testimony.

But with a variety of OEMs represented on your casino floor, getting all the machines and their proprietary technologies to work together with JackpotJunction is probably a chore, right? Wrong. “The technology is entirely standards-based, running on [a] standard Windows network, supporting standard communication and broadcast formats, and running on standard, non-proprietary hardware,” Connelly explained. “The IT departments love us in that our wares always fit seamlessly into their architectures. This is a critical advantage over our competitors.”

BonusBox
As your casino rearranges banks of slot machines, wires new signage and rolls in that shiny new Corvette, do you ever wonder if there is a better way? There is. Instead of wheeling in one exorbitantly large prize, why not put a smaller carrot on a smaller stick—and put a stick on every machine? With Gaming Support’s BonusBox, you can put a luxury item in front of every slot player in your casino.

“The product’s conceptual design hinges on the notion that a physical prize planted in front of a patron’s face is more compelling than a prize which has been abstracted—a wad of cash, a Rolex, first-class tickets to Tahiti,” Connelly said. “By placing the prize front and center and animating it with each spin, we continually tempt the player, conveying the message, ‘Here’s the prize… right here, within your reach. Keep it up and it’s yours.’ We’re confident that this will keep the player planted in his or her seat, extending duration of play and … increasing daily win at the machine level.”

The BonusBox concept is much like putting a big prize on the floor, but the footprint is smaller. The BonusBox stands alongside the machine and doesn’t require reorganization of the slot floor. “As opposed to the carousel concepts which have become staples of most casinos (cars, motorcycles, etc.), the BonusBox’s physical footprint is entirely negligible,” Connelly said. “There’s no need to blow out banks of machines in order to make way for a carousel.”

As pragmatic as the first two considerations are, BonusBox’s third conceptual component might be the most practical. “With the proliferation of video, the industry has seen an enormous influx of increasingly complex propositions,” Connelly said. “Bonus games, free spins, multi-line wagering, multilevel jackpots, multi-denom, insurance, guaranteed time-at-terminal, extreme tokenization. With BonusBox, the proposition couldn’t be simpler: You win, the box opens and you grab the prize. It’s a very refreshing contrast to what has become, in many respects, a lot of white noise on the floor.”

Response from operators has been overwhelmingly positive, with Gaming Support’s initial production run pre-sold prior to the launch of its formal campaign. Installation on gaming floors will begin late in the third quarter of 2008.

Most operators are planning to place electronics and jewelry in the BonusBox, but some are planning to go old school and put cold, hard cash in the device. The reason, Connelly says, is simple: “As one savvy operator put it, ‘You can’t stuff an iPhone into a bill acceptor.’”

One of a Kind
So, what makes Gaming Support unique? Everything. “As a vendor of gaming peripherals, Gaming Support has a disproportionally large technical service infrastructure—well in excess of half the company,” Connelly said. “This is an important source of differentiation from our competitors.”

There’s also the vast amount of operational experience, the non-proprietary protocols that can be integrated with other manufacturers’ products, and the unrivalled understanding of exactly how a casino floor and its components operate—remember, Gaming Support is the exclusive technical services provider to all 14 of Holland Casino’s properties.

With headquarters in Rotterdam and a Las Vegas office, Gaming Support has a global customer base with products on six of the seven continents.

And when a casino opens up in Antarctica, you can bet Gaming Support will be there.

Gaming Support Key Executives
Lucien van Linden: Chief Executive Officer
Frans Kornaat: Chief Operating Officer
Jaap van der Wees: Chief Financial Officer
Joe Giordano: Vice President of Engineering
Nick Hogan: Vice President of Sales and Business Development

Michael Shirek is an Associate Editor at Casino Enterprise Management. He can be reached at (701) 293-7775 or editor3@aceme.org.