Same S**t Different Day

For as long as I've covered it, the gambling industry has had a strange fascination with cohorts that have little interest in their products.

The semi-infamous “Gambling is Dead” quote from the NEXT.io Conference in March was the talk of X for a couple of days. The quote turned out to be more of a nothing burger than the hot take to end all hot takes, but it illustrates an important point that I seem to write about every five years or so.  

For those that may not remember, Yolo Investments’ Julian Buhagiar’s statement that “gambling was dead” was laughed off until it was put into perspective by Sports Handle’s Matt Rybaltowski, who noted, “It became quickly apparent that he proposed a thesis for how the industry needs to respond to rapidly changing customer dynamics.”

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Buhagiar didn’t stop at “gambling is dead.” He went on to say, “We have seen a massive disconnect between how we gamble today and what the Gen Zs are going to be gambling on in 2025.”

Still, BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt sees it differently. According to Greenblatt, the industry needs to stop looking five or ten years down the road and understand the current opportunity.

I’m on Team Greenblatt and have been saying something similar for years (which I’ll highlight in just a moment). The idea that the industry should continually look to the future is one of the industry’s biggest time and money sinks.

Yes, having short- medium- and long-term strategies and goals is important. Still, when the long-term and short-term goals clash, companies and industries must prioritize. Focus on now and keep an eye on the future. Unfortunately, far too many people are running around who think the future is now. To quote Yoda, “All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing.”

10 Years of Saying the Same Thing

As I wrote in a 2015 article when the industry was obsessed with Millennials:

“Without doing any research, I immediately guessed — with a great level of certainty — that twenty-somethings have never been a demographic that has significantly contributed to the gambling take at Las Vegas casinos. On top of guessing, I also did a little research on this, and the data I found backs up my initial gut feeling.”

Six years later, the industry was no longer concerned with attracting millennials; its attention turned elsewhere. In 2021, I wrote this about Gen Zs when people were highlighting that they place smaller wagers and are more social:

“This is the same type of thinking that infected the millennial debate a half-decade ago. The only difference being the industry wanted millennials to go to casinos, while it sounds like the online industry is homing in on Generation Z.

“… if the industry wants millennial gamblers, it needs to do just one simple thing: wait. Wait until millennials are older, more financially secure, less inclined to party all night, and more willing to sit at a slot machine or blackjack table.

“If Generation Z is making smaller wagers, it’s for a very simple reason; most early-20-somethings don’t have much discretionary income. We don’t need epiphanies like social aspects, discerning (a popular term to attach to millennials), or interest in skill games to understand why their bets are smaller or more infrequent.”

My thesis is that people tend to gamble more as they age. This is true for most things.

Booze, Weights, and Gambling