� Approximately 60 percent of the players who signed on to play online were “ new acquisitions ”; i . e ., they were not previously enrolled in the Tropicana ’ s customer database .
� Of the remaining 40 percent , about half were inactive or “ lapsed ,” meaning that they had not generated any tracked play at the Tropicana during the previous 12 months .
On one level , those data points appear to portend profound implications for a critical question : Does online play cannibalize land-based play ? The basic data would indicate that one out of every five online players – half of the online players who were in the Tropicana database – were existing land-based customers , and the initial assumption would be that such online play would cannibalize the land-based spending by these customers .
Not so , according to Woods . Those customers who played in multiple channels – online and land-based – increased their total land-based spend , as well as their frequency of visitation . Woods summarized it thusly : “ Not only was their online spend completely incremental , but they also grew their land-based spend .”
If you assume that humans are rational , the reasons for that phenomenon are easy to glean : Adults earn rewards online , which supplement their rewards at land-based casinos , so they have an added incentive to increase their visitation to the host casino where they can redeem the rewards they have earned .
These observations raise several critical questions , including :
1 . Why are online sites that are tied to land-based brands well positioned to gain more play than would free-standing brands – such as those that predominate in Europe ?
2 . What are the public policy implications for states that seek to pursue online gaming ?
Historical Overview , Relevance
In order to understand the current state of online wagering in the United States , we must first explore and analyze the recent history of the relationship between land-based and online forms of gaming . That , in turn , requires an examination as to how other , similar industries have reacted to landscape-shifting technologies , such as the Internet . Indeed , history has shown that many industries initially react to new technologies as a threat . Rather than adapt the technology to create a new business model , existing industries often begin by affirmatively rejecting the technology . This rejection evolves into acceptance and ultimately into an embrace .
Observing 15 th Anniversary of SIGHT 6