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Atlantic City Gambles on Younger Crowd
Atlantic City’s 2 ½ year makeover is beginning to pay off. Efforts by managers and owners of this New Jersey coastal city’s casino venues to cultivate a younger, sexier vibe are already drawing a different sort of crowd.
Atlantic City has long been thought of as a paradise for the elderly. Images of blue-haired ladies of a certain age dropping quarters into slot machines have traditionally symbolized this part of the Jersey shore.
However, several years ago, a few Atlantic City casino and nightclub operators made a concerted decision to try to add a different sort of customer to the mix. Owners and managers realized that there was a whole largely untapped population that should be customers but weren’t: those who live within easy driving distance but do not come to the casinos. Robert Boughner, president of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, coined the term “Atlantic City rejecters” to refer to this body of potential, but not actual, customers.
Bougher decided that the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa would strive to bring these people into the casino fold. He started with what was, for Atlantic City, an advertising revolution. The Borgata’s advertising stressed that Atlantic City was a place for sexy good times rather than merely a casino destination. In another dramatic upheaval of the Atlantic City industry standard, Borgota ditched the “old timer acts” that are the staple of casino entertainment here, and began to bring in more current singers and performers.
Moreover, Borgota flouted Atlantic City casino conventions by offering a greater concentration of table games such as roulette, blackjack, and craps, as opposed to the more profitable but less sexy slot machines.
"We determined that everyone who wanted to play 25-cent slots on a Tuesday afternoon in February was already coming," Boughner said. "We didn't say, 'Let's go after the younger market.' We said, 'Let's take (market) share from our competitors and let's grow the market.'”
"Tables are hot, there's no doubt about it," said casino industry consultant Joe Weinert. "A lot of that is fueled by poker's popularity and its popularity on TV, which is showing Americans that table games in general are fun.”
"Increasingly, we're becoming a society that has grown up with solitary gaming experiences on their computers, TV sets or personal game consoles. And I think people are going to casinos and discovering the community atmosphere on the gaming tables. They're finding out that, hey, it's fun to be around real people," said Weinert, who is an executive at Spectrum Gaming Group.
The gamble taken by Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa has paid off. The casino is now one of the most profitable in Atlantic City, drawing the 20-40 crowd in large numbers. Other casinos and recreational venues have followed suit, and brand new hip bars and restaurants have sprung up all over the city.
Atlantic City’s older visitors, however, are hesitant to completely cede their domain to the spring chickens. Several interviewed by the press were dismissive and even defiant. The over 50-ers, they maintained, remain the bread and butter daytime-during-the-week players of the Atlantic City casino crowd. The youngsters, who generally play on Friday and Saturday nights, are merely icing on the cake.
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