ANDERSON — With revenues dropping at casinos statewide, the gaming industry is constantly looking for ways to attract more customers.
Centaur Gaming, which owns Hoosier Park Racing & Casino in Anderson and Indiana Grand in Shelbyville, is starting to look at new ways to make gaming easier in its casinos.
Centaur President and Chief Operating Officer Jim Brown recently spoke in front of the Interim Study Committee on Public Policy in Indianapolis. The committee is tasked with coming up with ways to allow casinos in Indiana to be more competitive against casinos in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.
Brown said Centaur would like to see three major changes in the current law that would allow Hoosier Park and Indiana Grand to offer more gaming and create more capital improvements, which in turn would attract more business.
The three items were live table gaming, currently not allowed in land-based casinos; deducting free play from the graduated wagering tax, which Brown said would allow for more aggressive competition; and providing incentives for improvement projects.
Free play is currently used as a promotional tool to bring people into a casino. Patrons are given the free money, which they have to bet, as a way to encourage them to continue playing. Brown said the new casinos in Ohio are allowed to be more aggressive with free play advertising because they aren't taxed on the free play money while Indiana casinos are. Deducting the free play from the tax would allow casinos to give away more free play tokens and therefore bring in more players.
Brown also said Centaur's casinos would be more likely to make improvements if there was more of an economic incentive from the state to do so.
"This incentive would increase property taxes, create new construction jobs and create new permanent jobs," Brown said. "It would also increase regional tourism."
Live table games are something Centaur has been pushing the Indiana General Assembly on for a few years. Currently, Hoosier Park has games like blackjack and poker, but they are operated by a computer instead of a dealer. Brown said exchanging a human with a computer chip wouldn't be an expansion of gaming and would create about 600 new jobs between the two casinos.
While Centaur would like to see those changes enacted by the legislators, they are tentatively moving forward with another idea to make gaming more mobile.
The company recently got approval from the Indiana Gaming Commission to move forward with an idea for mobile gaming.
Brown said mobile gaming is simply an iPad that patrons can play slots or poker on while walking around the casino. He said the idea is to give the players the option of continuing to play their game while walking around or watching a horse race.
"The plan is to run it through our game system," Brown said. "It wouldn't be hooked up to the Internet. It's just another option for our customers."
Still in the very preliminary stages, the mobile gaming system could go live at Indiana Grand during the first quarter of 2015 if everything goes according to plan, Brown said. He said the Shelbyville casino was picked as the test building because it has a more defined game room area which anyone using the mobile system must stay in. If successful, Centaur would then try the mobile gaming option in Anderson. No timetable for that has been set.