Slot Check with Grant Stousland

Good morning, Dan. How are things in Las Vegas this morning?

Morning, Nick. It's great to be here. And it was great to see you in person in the States a couple of weeks ago at G2E.

Yeah, that was lovely. Had a great time there and it was lovely to catch up with everybody in the industry, and here we are, now in late October. As you mentioned, G2E is wrapped and we're all back home now, kind of ticking through our follow-ups. We're going to be hitting G2E in a minute here, but I thought it would be best to first cover a news topic that's been generating a lot of discussion. And that's the FBI's announcement, that two gambling-related sting operations, codenamed, Operation Nothing but Bet and Operation Zhen Diagram. Ugh. They resulted in the arrest of some 30 people, including Miami Heat guard, Terry Rozier, former NBA player and coach, Damon Jones, and the current head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups.

So in the case of Rozier, the allegation is that he was peddling inside information about players, including himself. In one case, he apparently tipped off bettors that he'd be leaving a game early, which resulted in about $200,000 in under bets on his performance, that paid off hugely when he exited the game after just nine minutes. The charges filed against Jones and Billups are more serious, in that each was charged, not only with trading insider NBA info, but also, for serving as celebrity shills who were used to lure wealthy players to rigged poker games, which were operated, and here's the fun part, Dan, by associates of New York's Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families. So one of the more sensational elements of the story regards to technology use in the scam, this included altered DeckMate2 shufflers that transmitted card recognition data, contact lenses and glasses that read marked cards, hidden cameras and chip trays, and incredibly x-ray poker tables. So you can't make this stuff up.

Not surprisingly, the news is generating a lot of discussion, not only about the pace and scale of sports betting's proliferation, but also, its influence on the integrity of sports generally. So x-ray tables aside, I can't say that this story shocked me too much. I've always kind of followed the rule, never bet on things that breathe as the incentive for corruption is quite large. And while the odds of getting caught are typically and unfortunately quite slim. So this made me quite curious about the American attitudes towards sports betting, which in turn led me to a 2025 study conducted by Sacred Heart University in Connecticut in which they polled Americans about their views on sports betting. So I'll post a link to that study in our show notes, but just kind of summarize top-line findings in three areas. So first, support for legalization. Nearly 60% of the respondents support legalization within their own states, and roughly 53% support its legalization nationwide.

Second, in terms of league partnerships and media coverage, roughly 50% of Americans oppose sports leagues partnering with gaming platforms, while just 30% support it. And roughly 27% polled say that sport media's coverage of betting has grown excessive. Third, and this is where things get somewhat contradictory and weird. 61% of Americans are concerned that sports betting significantly increases the corruption risk in sports. And whereas 37% believe that sports betting's legalization is balanced positive, 48% feel that it's balanced negative.

So Dan, I'm not entirely certain how to interpret some of the study's findings, but what I do know is that, historically, whenever there have been concerns regarding the fairness of gambling propositions, it's just bad for business, bad for the industry. So I guess, my questions for you in this area are, first, how damaging do you feel that this and other such scandals will prove ultimately in terms of the popular perceptions of sports betting? And two, do you feel there are regulatory or free market steps that could be taken to boost fairness and player confidence, just generally? And by player, I mean, better confidence, I guess.

Yeah, it's a wild story, isn't it? And I'm no-

Oh, crazy.

... expert. I didn't even know it was called, until this now, Operation Nothing but Bet, right? I like that. No, I mean, everything I've been reading about it kind of says what you just said, which is on the one hand, the public is asking for this and is demanding legalization and expansion. On the other hand, even those asking for it are raising obvious concerns, on both problem gaming and corruption, and how are those addressed? So I get The Athletic sends out a weekly newsletter on the business of sports, and the one that they just sent out was titled, It's Okay to Learn About Sports Betting. And basically, the theme of it was exactly what you just said, which is this ambivalence on, "Yes, we want it. Yes, we need this, but here are our concerns." And there was three topics in it that I thought were really fascinating and I'll just list them out here for you. The first was an article written by one of their staff writers, Ian O'Connor, and it was about the NBA and it went back to 2007, if you remember the referee Tim Donaghy betting scandal.

Yes, yes.

And the evolution from that time and what the NBA's position and all the pro sports positions were around sports betting, to where they're today, which is obviously a polar opposite, and doing all these partnerships. And the article really advocated, you asked about free market versus regulatory, that the genie is kind of out at the bottle at this point. And it's really difficult for there to be free market solutions because it's a mature industry now, it's profitable, folks need these cash streams, whether you're the leagues, whether you're the broadcasters, or whether you're the platform providers. The second article, which I thought was really interesting was actually about the NCAA. And I don't know if this news has made it over to Netherlands, but it just so happened that on the 22nd, which is either the day of or the day before this scandal came out, that the NCAA made a rule that they were going to allow athletes to bet on pro sports.

And that was due to go into effect this Saturday, was going to be when they were first allowed to do it. Just yesterday, the Commissioner of the SEC, who's Greg Sankey, sent a letter to the NCAA commissioner asking for a 30-day stay on this and eventually rescinding it. And I'll just read a couple blurbs from his letter, but he said, "The integrity of competition is directly threatened when anyone with insider access becomes involved in gambling. Even when the wagers are placed on professional sports, the simple act of participation in gambling normalizes behavior, blurs boundaries and erodes judgment." Adding that the SEC was equally concerned about the impact of gambling on athletes, including financial pressure and social influence. The NBA scandal came despite oversight, education and support systems. He added, "While college athletes have far fewer resources and far greater outside influence." And so after receiving that letter yesterday, the NCAA announced that they're going to put a 30-day pause on allowing it and potentially vote... They have 30 days according to their rules, to rescind it prior to November 22nd. So we'll see what happens there.

And then the third story, that I don't know if it's made it over your way, is this announcement by the NHL a couple of weeks ago, where the NHL announced official partnerships with both Kalshi and Polymarket. Now the AGA, the regulators and lawmakers in sports gaming states are obviously all up in arms, so it's kind of wild. But it all kind of goes to what you said, which is, it seems the commercials and the free market is obviously pushing in a certain direction, but it'd be fascinating to see from a regulatory standpoint. You have Nevada who has come out and said, "Hey, we're going to be looking closely at suitability for licensing with folks who partner with prediction markets." And then from a regulatory or legislative standpoint, is there anything around, either prop betting or any impact on states that still haven't approved? Does this become part of the conversation? So like I said, I'm no expert, I don't know, but I'm fascinated. Has it been-

Yeah, that really seems that-

... as big over on your side of the pond?

I'm sorry, Dan, I talked over you there. I didn't hear you.

I said, "Has it been as big a story on your side of the pond?"

Well, anything related to FIFA and football, of course, people can't get enough corruption. I have to say, there are only two professional sports I really follow, and that's squash and big wave surfing. So there's not a lot of betting under those. So I can't say that... But there's a ton of sports betting over here and it's quite a mature big market. But I think there is always this underlying assumption, I think people just live with it, this idea that you don't bet on things that breathe, that there's always an incentive in there for corruption, especially when you're dealing with these prop bets, which I think is really where the bulk of this stuff goes, just something seemingly unimportant that's done, that can throw a prop in a game.

So yeah, I mean, there's discussion of it. I wouldn't say that its super heated, but perhaps that's just because I think it's been around a bit longer and people are a bit more accustomed to it. But I just think that it is my impression that people just assume that's just cooked into the deal, that there is this incentive out there, and it's hard to catch people on this stuff.

Yeah. On the industry side, I guess, I'm interested in, A, what enhanced data solutions are there to identify more through the algorithms? And B, just does this lead to even more enhanced in the regulatory market's investments into protection and enforcement?

Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see where this goes. I think, I would say that's a positive development with the NCAA thing. I am not a person who really likes this stuff going on with NCAA and player comp and this kind of stuff. I am just not so wild about it. But yeah, it'll be a fun story to continue watching here and we'll see where it goes, for sure.

Okay, Dan, so today's listener question. Let's head into that. Let me say before we get going here that we'd love to tackle any questions that anybody listening may have. So if you have a question about what we're presenting or something you'd like us to present, please drop us an email at reelcast@reelmetrics.com. Again, that is R-E-E-L-C-A-S-T at reelmetrics.com. Our policy is to keep all questions anonymous, so please speak directly and don't worry about us revealing your identity, that is not something we do.

So Dan, this comes from an operator in Southern California who asks, "Hi guys, love the podcast. Just curious what caught your eyes at G2E, anything we should be paying attention to over the next six months or so?" So Dan, as you know, I was tied up in meetings pretty much all week, and I spent only 20 minutes or so on the floor, so I'm going to throw this question to you exclusively. So what'd you see that caught your eyes and is there anything that you think we should be watching for the next six months or so?

Yeah, I was going to ask you if you made it down to the floor, because the first thing I noticed is just everything was different. So every year, I'm sure leading up to the show, you get these emails every few days from the show saying, "Download the app, download the app, download the app." Well, I never downloaded the app, and this is an advertisement for the app because I certainly needed it this year, just because the show was bigger. Attendance might've been slightly down I had heard, not sure if that's true, but the floor was much bigger and there were more exhibitors, and everything moved. It all started with the giant new combined IGT in Everi booth, and then from there it was just kind of this arms race, where Everi moved into the IGT booth, AGS moved into the bigger Everi booth, Bluberi moved into the bigger-

AGS booth.

Yeah, some other consolidations, Zitro had a giant booth, and then a lot of the smaller booths were just all over the place. So for the first time in years, I was just lost and I couldn't find anything. So definitely going to download the app, but my big takeaway is, never have I come out of the show and gone into a year where it's just like there's so much unknown about who's going to perform over the next year. I thought everybody showed very well. Hardware is improving, game design is improving, art, sound, merchandising is improving. Signage was a big plus this year. So whether it's some of the traditional merchandising or companies, like L&W with their light wave and Aruze presented new immersive premium signage walls, where the games interact with the signage. Sound is improving. But I say there's a lot of uncertainty just because almost everybody's in transition. Besides Light & Wonder, you have leadership transitions at Aristocrat, you have ownership transitions with the IGT-Everi move, and then on the smaller front you have ownership transitions with Gaming Arts and with AGS.

Yeah. AGS went private.

Yeah. So for me, it's what happens with this Everi-IGT combination with Apollo. What is their hardware roadmap over the next couple of years? How long does that take to evolve? And then if, in the short term, there's a little bit of a pause and a step back, does that mean either Light & Wonder or Aristocrat are kind of in the catbird seat, swooping in and getting aggressive and taking some share? Or is it an opportunity for some of those smaller players, whether it's, again, an AGS, Bluberi, a Gaming Arts, or even a Konami who's kind of doing a reboot and launching a brand new platform this year.

And you talk to different people, they all give different opinions on who they think is going to benefit, how successful is IGT-Everi going to be over the next year in maintaining share? And then if there's a couple of points to give up, is it just more to Aristocrat and L&W opportunity for a tier two or tier three supplier to really step up and solidify themselves as number four and number five players?

For sure. And it's my feelings as well, even though I was not down there looking at product, we of course had questions. You and I were both speaking at Barry Jonas' dinner there during the show, and we had a lot of questions about this type of stuff. All very interesting. But I have exactly the same questions in my head, about what we're going to see here over the next year or two, for sure. Okay. All right. Well, let's see. I think, Dan, it's time to move on to today's guest. So this gentleman, Dan, is a diehard Wisconsinite having done his undergrad at University of Wisconsin-Madison and his MBA at Concordia University of Wisconsin. His industry tenure dates back to 2009 when he became president and CEO of Gaming Informatics, a company that was acquired by Kobetron and GLI back in 2016.

He also, very admirably, devotes a portion of his time to teaching business management at the Madison Area Technical College. But pretty much everybody listening today knows him as the face of what I consider to be one of the more unique companies in the slot industry today, and that is Slot Check. So I'm referring of course to its founder and CEO, Mr. Grant Stousland. So howdy, Grant, how are things with you today?

Yeah, good morning, Nick. Thanks for having me. Things are great.

Oh, you betcha. And before we get going, we do have a pre-interview disclosure to make here, and that is that Dan actually sits on Slot Check's advisory board, and this is a fact I didn't know until very recently when I asked Dan, "Hey, Dan, do you know a guy named Grant Stousland?" So not the greatest detective work for me up front, but there we have it. So Grant, just to get started here, can you walk us through your gaming industry career and the path that took you there to Slot Check?

Sure, yeah, happy to do so. Yeah, as you mentioned, 2009 is when I entered the gaming industry. And prior to that, I was in the consumer products world, apparel and accessories, manufacturing, licensing, selling to retailers around the country. It was a lot of fun doing that. And then in 2009, I had an opportunity to write a strategic business plan for a company in Madison, Wisconsin, which is Gaming Informatics. And so I wrote that strategic business plan, and it was a lot of fun doing research in the gaming industry. And then an opportunity arose for me to become president of that company. And that company was in a unique spot. They had spent six years developing a first-in-class regulatory application that connects the independent testing labs to the properties, such for operators, for tribal gaming regulators, and then state regulators.

So they had spent six years developing that, I don't want to say failure to launch in hindsight. In hindsight, I realized, as you know, Nick, this is a tough industry. It's tough to break into. Before you get to that hockey stick curve, it takes a lot of effort, kind of pushing rope uphill. But that company was developing a great product. IRIS is the name of it, the Integrated Regulatory Information System. And today it's IRIS by Kobetron. When they acquired that from me in '16, I think we had maybe 30 some customers, and I think there're over 350 today.

Wow.

We'd have to talk to Paul Magno or Patrick Parish there to confirm that, but-

And Grant, a primary point of that was looking at managing revocations and things like... Do I have that right?

Yeah, that's right. It was a system that allows, as I mentioned, operators, TGAs and state regulators to monitor their gaming floor, the EGMs on their floor. So it's a system that tells them which machines are approved, revoked, or obsolete. And prior to IRIS, this was a very manual process. It was not exactly timely. A lot of sort of human error opportunities in there. So IRIS solved that problem. It was able to now give regulators and operators basically real-time information, so that if something was revoked or obsolete, they couldn't get it off the floor. So at the end of the day, IRIS helps ensure the integrity of the industry. Behind the scenes it helps protect players and casinos.

Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So you're focused on, it was a very regulatory oriented B2B offering.

Definitely. Very much.

And then somehow you managed to move all the way over into more of a B2C oriented web app for slot players. So maybe you can talk us... What caused you to do that?

Yeah. Well, the gaming industry, as you know, it's quite interesting. And there's been a lot of innovation in gaming that I always respected and was attracted to. I mean, folks like Jon Yarbrough, bringing class 2 bingo to what it is today. I mean, that's a fascinating story. You've got the Mark Pincus' of Zynga bringing poker to Facebook, and Playtika, the first company to bring online slots to Facebook. And who would've imagined that people would pay real money to get fake coins to win more fake coins? But here, it's a big business. And you have folks like Rick Johnson who really invented preview games. I don't know if you're familiar with preview games or not.

I don't know that.

Yeah. Well, Ohio has a rich gray market history, and Rick figured out that, to be gambling, it has to be consideration, chance, and prize. And I think he was being deposed or in something like that, and the person asked him, "Would this be gaming? Would this be gaming? Would this be gambling?" And the person then said, "Well, what wouldn't be gambling?" And he said, "Well, if you knew the outcome, it wouldn't be gambling." So he put preview buttons on the slot machines so the player could hit the preview button and they would see the result of the next spin. And what he understood psychologically is that it wasn't about the next spin, it was about the entire experience. And so by having a preview button, it was no longer chance. You removed chance from it. You could see the outcome.

And he built... It's sort of a long story. But my point with all this is that, this is an industry that has always experienced really tremendous innovation. And I think your company, Nick, falls into that. When I first met you in 2013 and you told me that you're going to start this company with John, called ReelMetrics, and it required casinos to give you information. I thought, "Boy, good luck getting the slot information from casinos."

Yeah. You weren't the only one who said that. Trust me.

That was my first reaction to it. As I sat there at Gaming Informatics on the regulatory side of life, I thought, "Well, wait a minute. Why aren't casinos sharing real time slot performance data with players? I mean, everything. These are random number generators at the end of the day, or pseudo random number generators. The hold isn't going to change. Why not sort of flip the script and be completely transparent with players? Won't that engender trust? Won't that sort of rise the tide perception wise for the entire industry and maybe attract people who otherwise wouldn't place slot machines?" So I thought, "Well, let's do it. Let's show the player hold, or POP, the Payout to Player, depending on your perspective. Let's show Return to Player. How's this machine been paying out recently in the last 30 days? Why not show them the win, the plays, spins, volatility, wins per spin, jackpot wins per spin? Why not just show all of this to the player so that they feel more empowered and can enjoy that entertainment experience even even more?"

Okay.

So Grant, Slot Check, can you just walk us through maybe what this looks like starting from a player perspective, and what their experience is, maybe starting with enrollment process and then touching on, for them, what some of the features and benefits are?

Sure. Yep. Happy to. So Slot Check is a web app. So you don't go to the iTunes or Play Store to download it, it's accessible anywhere. It's just a website, essentially. So you can go to slotcheck.com or my.slotcheck.com, create an account, it's free, just need your cell number, create a password, and you're in. And currently, we've got three customers on the platform. We just went live at Silver Sevens Casino in Las Vegas. So this is Halloween weekend, I'll be heading there on Friday, we're doing an activation event. So if anybody wants to come down, link your Silver Sevens, play your card to the app, and you'll get the pro version of Slot Check for free. So there's a free version and a pro version. But when the players enter the app, you can choose what casino you want to see the floor of, and once you're in there, there's an interactive map of the floor.

You can see which ones have had the most Return to Player and which ones have been coldest. You can see which ones have hit jackpots, how many and when, all kinds of information on a very accurate interactive heat map of the floor. And the players can also search for their favorite slots. They can click on the banks and the map and see just the slots in that bank. And when you create an account, you're given a player alias. So we don't show any real people's personally identifiable information on the app, but you're given a player alias, like Jackpot King 1, for example. And so there's MyPlay area in the app, so you can tag your favorites, you can see the games you played. It'll keep track of your jackpots. And there's a leaderboard on the app as well. So you can see who hit the most jackpots in the last 30 days or 7 days, who won the most and so forth.

What's the most popular feature?

Return to Player would be the most popular feature. People want to see, how has this game been playing? Has it been underpaying, has it been overpaying? And then jackpots. And when you show all this information, it's really not one insight or one stat. At least I find that myself, when I use it, you can look at everything together. How's it been paying out? Has it hit any jackpots? Has this game been played a lot or a little? So looking at the trends-

I'm sure Nick's champing at the bit to ask you how popular RTP is for the operators here in a minute. But-

Oh, yeah. Sure.

... from the operator side, and I think you said you're live in Nevada and the other jurisdiction is...

Washington and Wisconsin. Yep, And then knock on wood, I don't want to jinx anything, but we're hoping to be in Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma here, at least hopefully contract signed before the end of the year. So I don't know if we'll be live there before the end of the year, but the company's growing.

Gotcha. And so from the operator side, how heavy a lift is this? What does this implementation look like? What does go live look like?

Yeah. Well, so I know those in the industry may not believe this, but it's really a pretty light lift from an onboarding standpoint. I'm just going to use Silver Sevens as an example. From contract signing to ready to go live, it was six weeks all in. So getting connected through a replicated server for the slot data took us 48 hours, getting the map in, and we really do much of the work there. Again, folks at Silver Sevens were awesome. Richie and his team did a great job on the slot floor, naming conventions. But so within two weeks we had data map in app.

Wow.

Gotcha. And then ongoing maintenance, is it mostly the team updating that's maintaining?

Yep, that's a good question. So the updating of the map, there's basically three types of changes on the floor and Slot Check automatically picks up two of those. And the only time that we need to change a map is if a wall changes or a bank configuration does get reconfigured from a bank of eight to a bank of four. And our map changes, and we really do all the work on that. We've got a simple change process that the casinos follow, and we will get those changes done same day.

Gotcha. And then last question here, so the customers you've gone live with, and I guess, the ones in the queue, are they having you launch it as a standalone app or are they asking you to embed it within their existing app if they have one?

Yeah. Yeah. Currently, it's been standalone. We certainly had conversations with people who do want to integrate it with a link or deep link within their player app. But it works beautifully standalone, and we look forward to integrating with anyone's concierge or loyalty apps.

Gotcha.

Okay, cool. So Grant, now, as Dan rightly predicted, the notion of exposing RTP to players and competitors is one that likely generates a lot of pushback and objections. I've been there on the data disclosure front. So can you run us through some of these? What are the more common objections you hear and how do you deal with these?

Sure. Well, first, nomenclature in the industry for those in the industry and for those not in the industry, so hold, which is, in the gaming industry, as we know that every game in legal gambling jurisdictions have to be tested and confirmed to pay out a certain amount over their lifetime. So if a game has a 10% hold, that means that 90% will get paid back to player over its lifetime. So in our app, hold is that lifetime number or that par number.

Gotcha.

What will that game Payout to Player, POP? So from the player standpoint, they want to know, how much money am I going to get back for every dollar that I put in? The casinos look at hold, how much money are we going to keep from every dollar that's put in? So in Slot Check, we show POP, so Payout to Player is what we show, and that's the lifetime number. And of course, there's lots of strong reactions to that. And can we not show that? Sure. We can always pull it out if a property really is concerned about showing what that game is set at. And then we can-

Do you have a scale or something too, that's between tight and loose or anything like that?

No, we don't. We've made a decision to, let's be engineers here, let's just show the data. Let's not play games with hot, cold, medium. Let's not sort of, kind of. We've been all in on, let's just show the data. The stock market does it. Sports analytics certainly does it. Let's be really upfront with players.

Tables do it. We know all the percentages going in.

Tables do it.

We know house advantage.

Yep. And-

[Inaudible 00:34:18] casino?

Yep.

Yep, yep. Back in the day, if you were a dealer and you were giving players the odds in blackjack or poker, you might get fired. But now they sell the cards in the gift shop.

The basic strategy sheets.

So people understand how to play the game. So in any other industry, sharing more with the consumer is good. We know where our clothes are made, we know where our food comes from, how many calories. And in our industry, that just hasn't been the case. Slot machines have been these black boxes. And certain players, like myself, which is part of how I came up with this was, I would go to all these trade shows and be in plenty of casinos, but I didn't love putting my money in slot machines because I knew nothing about it. I know I'm biased, but when I go to one of our casinos, I play, because it is fun and I know that I'm going to play Dragon Links, for example. But having a tool to help me make the decision of which of those Dragon Links am I going to play is just really helpful. It makes it just a much more enjoyable experience.

Yeah. And this is where... Well, as you know, I've watched you guys grown from absolute infancy. So when you first started, I was looking at it and what I really loved instantly was... Because I'm super interested in player behavior generally, but what I love about it is giving players just like a popsicle display on a roulette table, giving them a semblance of control, so that they're coming in and they really feel this control, which for me, and everything that we've done here in the last couple of years, looking at the experience of players going into casinos and selecting products and then what kind of experience they have on that, what I really love about it, is it makes the trip more purposeful in the end.

So again, we go back to this idea, that if a player gets on what they want to play, you're going to get the budget they brought into the casino. If they're on what they have to play, you're going to be lucky to get 40% of it. So it's just that notion of making it more purposeful and interesting. So maybe you can speak to those points, or that one in particular there. Yeah.

Sure, yeah. So boy, there's just so much to cover here. So you reminded me of... So LT agency did a report here this summer. They issued their Gaming Trends 2025 report. In there, they talked a lot about the digital experience being important, interactions with players being important, and they talked about the need to personalize the experience. I think that's certainly what Slot Check addresses and what you really alluded to. This is personal, I have control. Knowledge is power, knowledge is empowering. I now have the knowledge and control to make the decision that's best for me. It's personal now, to me. And of course, the MyPlay piece in our app as well is unique to the industry. Today, you have to go up to the counter and get your accounting sheet. Here, you can see your play right in the app. And for us, that's very much about that personal experience that's honoring the player.

Oh, wow. So as a player, I have analytics on my own play, like a summary of-

Yeah.

Oh, wow. Okay.

It's very basic today, but we've got this wonderful roadmap that is very much going to flush that out. So you can tag your favorites, for example. You can put slots into a playlist. So again, what I was doing here before this call, getting ready to go to Las Vegas on Friday, Halloween, was I was looking at the floor to find opportunities to figure out what I want to play. And I've got my list, and when I get there, I can just play. And just having a little bit of information just goes a long way and I'm looking forward to going there and seeing if I pick things right. So that personal aspect. And Slot Check really is about player-driven engagement. I think sort of different than some other traditional push-pull promotional strategies in the casino, where here's the coupon, come in, redeem it and get something. Slot Check really is about just giving information to the players. There's really nothing expected in return. The players just take over and they see the value in it.

Let me qualify that for a moment though. At the moment, Slot Check is just as new and bold to casinos as it is to players. Many players can't even believe that this is actually happening or that this is actually real. So right now, figure 2 to 3% of your carded players are really the target market here. Like any new technology or innovation, it follows that diffusion curve of innovation. And we're very much at the front end of that. So these are innovative players, these are innovative casinos that are adopting this, and I'm sure we'll talk about it. Yeah, it's a bold idea to share this information for casinos, but the results are really bananas, really incredible.

Now, and I assume that on the operator side too, they have the ability to do some analytics and whatnot on the app usage. Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. We look at a number of things, and we segment it out as well. Your hosted players on Slot Check versus those that aren't. What their play has been like once they're on Slot Check compared to before they were on Slot Check, same period previous year. We look at those who are on the pro version versus free version. We segmented out a number of different ways. We also look at acquisition. So just some wonderful stories there of people creating a Slot Check account and then 3 days, 5 days, 10 days later, they come into the casino, create a player ID and then link it to Slot Check. So that correlation, causation of acquisition, we know that it's bringing new players through the door. From a player development standpoint, analytics on that as well. Those players that were unhosted, got on Slot Check, now they've moved up because they've consolidated their wallet, to favor not playing blind and being in the know versus maybe their old favorites, where they don't have that information to play.

Gotcha.

And we've got player engagement stats as well. So from an analytic standpoint... And I will say, we are a startup, we are still changing very, very rapidly. And right now, internally, one of our big initiatives is an enterprise analytic solution. So we've got a number of considerations, and by the end of this month or maybe end of next week, we're going to be making a decision there of what route we're going to go. We've got a lot of really interesting stories that our data tells, and it all points to driving trips and driving spend to brick and mortar.

Great. I don't know if you can share, but I'll put my operator hat on for a second, because it's pretty obvious what the player benefit is, right? Operators are going to be more skeptical and operators are going to sit back and say, "Hey, I don't know about this transparency. I don't want to divulge all this." But at the end of the day, when operators are sold to, it comes down to, "Is it going to deliver us ROI or not?" And we sit through all these sales pitches and everyone says, "There's ROI. There's ROI." And you're always skeptical about, what are those numbers, really? You just talked about some of the metrics. Are there any actual results you're able to share, in terms of, how you've seen this so far?

Yeah. Yeah. And before I get to that, let me circle back to Nick's original question was, what kind of pushback are you getting? Let me frame that first and then I'll give you the results. So sharing hold or that Payout to Player, that's where the big friction comes. I mean, that's where the resistance is coming from. And as an operator, if my competitor sees hold, they're going to advertise that their slots are looser, they're now going to set their games lower and advertise it and steal my players. They're going to change their strategy to match mine. They're going to somehow reverse engineer all the numbers and know exactly what my floor hold is and what my gross gaming revenue is. There's all this sort of fear out there, and so far, knock on wood, and certainly reach out to any of our current customers. Nothing bad has happened.

Or sharing it with players, even. The resistance there is, "Well, I already have an issue with these persistence players and I have issues with these teams that come in. This is just going to exasperate that." It just hasn't happened. And my last calls with one of our customers, I asked it point-blank, "Do you have persistence games?" Yes. "Do you have persistent players?" Yes. "Is that a problem?" He's like, "We're in the gaming business. It's just things that we have to deal with. And has Slot Check changed that in any way?" Nope. Not at all. Some of the other objections is, "Well, if we show hold, players are only going to play the games that are the loosest. And that's also not-

No. That's not right.

... what happens. Yeah. I mean, and now just one example of that is, I think of, there's a couple that have been one of the early players on our app and they are video poker players. Game King, that's their game, their host told us that's what they play. They told me that's all they play. They now move around the floor like never before. So they're going from the 2% hold games to the Dragon Links, depending, that are 12%, 10 or 11%, or however you have them set. So these sorts of fears, and I get it, we've been told this in the industry, that hold is this state secret that we just can't share with anybody. And the reality is, the players don't care about it as much as you think they do. To punctuate that or back that up with numbers, Dan, I'm going to look at our, not most recent launch, but our launch at our second casino in March.

And so the numbers I'm going to share are from 600 players. So there were more than that, but we kicked out some of them in the analytics because they were new players. We didn't have play from them same period previous year. And I won't go into all the details. Get a hold of me, I'm happy to share all this with whoever might be interested. But we did break it out into hosted players versus non-hosted and then broke out some additional segments from there. But net-net, first 90 days, those 600 players visited one and a half additional trips more.

That is a great number.

It's a big number. Jackpots, the other thing... And I hesitate to share some of these numbers because we need more casinos, we need more data. But three casinos, we do have a lot of data, but still, some of this, I realize I need to be able to back it up.

So Grant, just rewinding for a second, did you say 1.5 incremental trips in the hosted segment?

Well, that's overall. Of the 600 hundred players-

Oh, all players.

Yeah. About half of those were hosted and half of those were not hosted-

Okay, gotcha.

To keep it simple. Yep.

Okay.

Yep. So one and a half additional trips per month for those players. So hold didn't change. I mean, to be exact about it, 0.02% is what hold went down for those 90 days. And after six months, it didn't change. Hold doesn't change. And that's true across our other properties as well. Their gross gaming revenue for those players went up 23%.

Wow.

I'm not going to divulge any confidential numbers, but I think a number of properties probably saw some decline in business during that period of time. There's a lot of uncertainty with the trade war going on and so forth. So not every property was up. But for those Slot Check players, 23% increase is pretty remarkable.

For sure.

And Dan, I know being on our advisory board, I went over all these numbers with you in detail, and one of our other advisory board members as well, who's a respected gentleman, spent his life in marketing for folks like Caesar's and the Lacks. Also, we went over this, we think the right way, and really vetted the numbers, when I showed these numbers to Steve, the advisory board member, he's like, "Now you're doing this right. People aren't going to believe it." But it's true. The other thing that's wild here, in those first 90 days, is that those players hit 132% more jackpots.

Wow.

Which is wild. And look back at out other property, and that's consistent. They are hitting more jackpots. One of the GM's, he said, "Well, it makes sense." I mean, they're consolidating their wallet, so they're playing more. They're playing with a little more confidence too, because they've got some numbers in front of them, and they believe that, "Okay, yep, I'm going to play through this trough. I know this machine, it's got to hit a jackpot. It normally does, hasn't hit one in 30 days. I'm feeling that I'm timing it right." So I guess that makes just perfect sense. If your coin goes up, you're going to hit more jackpot.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it means the players who are using it are getting out of it what they're looking for, because some of them are using the jackpot chasing features, what games should I play? And I'm sure folks that get in touch with you, some of them are going to be interested, I think, in what you could share and differences between hosted and non-hosted, because I imagine different operators have different goals for this app. Am I using it for the mass market? Am I using it for our VIP, et cetera?

Yeah. And so far, VIP is where it's focused. Again, we have a free version, and then there's a pro version that's $9.99 cents a month, so 10 bucks a month. And every property's different. The last two, if you're a hosted player, they're giving it away to those hosted players for the pro version, away for free. And who knows, maybe we go to a completely non-paid model. I don't know what the future has to bring. That's really up to the properties. When we engage with them, they can do whatever they want. They can get [inaudible 00:51:10]-

And Grant, are you seeing the highest rates of use from the hosted segment?

In general, I would say yes to that. But we got-

Just a bit more sophistication and seriousness about what they're doing, probably.

That's right. That's right. But I will say that we've got a great player development story. I think in those first 90 days, of those 600 players, I think 4 players moved from non-hosted to hosted.

Awesome.

And that story has only continued. So it's not just hosted players, but there's some non-hosted. And I think its wallet consolidation, and these people aren't all of a sudden finding more money. What we are hearing from them, anecdotally, we don't have net promoter score metrics in the app yet. We've got a long way to go. We know we want to get to, and we've got a lot of great data in there, but what I've been told, and one player's voice is always in my head, who said, "I don't like playing blind anymore, and what used to be my favorite casino, I now favor the one that has Slot Check." Still plays at the other one, but yeah, so that's one of the player stories.

In terms of engagement, so when we look at the different player segments, we also look at, what do the results look like? What does the play look like for those players who are using Slot Check the most? And I was looking at LT's gaming trend report for 2024, let's see if I got it here. And I think it said that for most loyalty or concierge apps, once a week, the players visit the app. So maybe four times a month, and maybe that spikes to 8 or 12 times a month that they're looking at their player app. I'm looking at some data here. So just after the first five months at one of our launches, the top player, and I'm looking at the top 20 players, that's just a snapshot that I'm looking at, but 240 logins per month on average.

Good lord.

And if I just go under, 159, 145, their numbers, it is player engagement. I mean, their engagement is-

They're really checking out those floors.

They are. And again, there's so many asides and stories that I can go into here. And one example of that, again, I think of there's a couple at one of our casinos that are good players, gotten to know them because of Slot Check, and they tell a story where they were at a competing casino to one of our Slot Check casinos, and they were playing there, and the wife said to her husband, "We got to go back to Torches." It was Lake of the Torches. "We've got to go back to Torches because I know this machine is going to hit a jackpot." I think you guys have heard me tell this story because it's a great story. So they did. They packed it up. They drove two hours and 15 minutes back to Lake of the Torches. And when she walked up to that Dragon Link machine that she had been following all week, the woman sitting there hit an $18,000 jackpot. And so they have other stories like this. They're random number generators-

Of course, yeah.

... at the end of the day. But another fun story, my-

This is the stuff you want to hear. So again, it's like they felt, "Ooh, I had so much control, but I just barely missed it." That's exactly what you want there.

It is. And I can go on with these stories. Let's see, I'll give you, well, one more story. So my wife and I were up at that casino and we were using the app and they were also up there, and we had zeroed in on a particular dollar storm game, and my wife was like, "Grant, get on that machine." So I got on it for a while, I'm like, "All right, now I'm not feeling it." So I got off and then the other player got on and we knew what we were doing. We both knew that we had sort of identified, we thought this machine was ready to hit a jackpot. So then he got on it, played for a while, then he got off, I got back on, I got off, he got back on that machine and he hit a $1,200 hand pay. And we high-fived and laughed about it. And again, it's all random, but it was unexpected that there would be that kind of friendly social interaction.

Yeah, cool.

Yeah. Kind of serves the purpose of what slot influencers do as well. A lot of overlap in telling those stories and spreading the words. So let me ask you, without divulging any secrets, next steps for the app, are there any new features that you wanted to highlight?

Yeah, it's sort of one casino at a time. I mean, as it turns out, this is more complicated than I think any of us expected on the technology side. So there's always, I'll say, backend work to get done. We're refining our search right now. We're refining just how you compare slots. We're refining some things in the app to remove some friction. There's some, we think, some funkiness in the app still. It works great, but there's opportunities always with software. So once we get that settled out, we're going to be refactoring our MyPlay section. So that's going to look much different. We're calling it V1.5. We've got a roadmap then to get to V.2, but we want to get the MyPlay looking much better than it does today. And our leaderboard too, we're going to do a reskin there that's going to be in line with where we're heading in the future.

So those aren't really new features. That's just going to be way better than what we have in there right now. And then notifications, that's going to be the big one. We expect to get notifications in the app, in-app notifications, because players have told us, "Hey, you've got my favorites, let me know when they hit a jackpot." In fact, contrary to receiving spam, they have said, "Email that to me. Text that to me. I want to know if one of my favorites has hit a jackpot." So that's a request that we've received from a number of players. So we do want to get notifications in. We also know that one of our properties would like to put some promotional offerings as well. And there's other things, like the weekend report, we want to be able to do. So on Monday, okay, what were the hot slots last weekend?

So reaching, creating more engagement, notifications is the big thing. And then all this is great stuff, but this is all sort of a head fake for what we think is next. When you build a system like this, and right now we're integrated... When it fits IGT and Oasis systems, we're solid. We look forward to our first Konami integration. We're looking forward to our first Valley integration. But once you connect real play in, essentially, real time. And it's not real real time. Depending on what metric we're looking at, it's two minutes, five minutes, half hour, hour, because it's session data, not meter data, at least currently. But when you start connecting real play in real time with real players and you build a platform that's able to do that, there's all kinds of really cool things that we can do.

Slot challenges, tournaments, even slot leagues, we expect to be able to deliver here. So real engagement. Take the bowling industry and how they run slot leagues or bowling leagues, imagine slot leagues to be similar. Imagine slot tournaments or challenges different than how the casinos do it today. Don't need to put the slot system in tournament mode. You're just standing up a slot tournament with your buddies who happen to be in Vegas and report the results. We've got a big vision there, but we've got a lot on our plate right now that we need to complete.

Yeah, one thing we often say around here is, "What we don't do is more important than what we do." But I know those trade-offs. But yeah, I mean, the community element to that just sounds so... You can totally see the idea of ladders and leagues and things going down.

Yeah.

Cool. Cool. Okay. So Grant, any upcoming events, speaking engagements, shows or anything that you'd like to promote?

Yeah, I wish there was. We have nothing planned at the moment. We think 2026 is going to be a breakout year for us, so would love to speak, be on a panel at IGA, YGA, G2E. Any events coming up, if you think this is something interesting. I mean, it's one thing for us to talk about it here in the podcast, to actually see the visuals is quite compelling. I think we've got something that's good for the industry. I think it is rising the tide for the industry. I think it's bringing players in who maybe otherwise wouldn't play. I think there's that trust factor, in general, I think this brings to our industry. So would love to talk all about that, love to share more numbers. But at the moment, we don't have anything planned.

Okay. And then anybody listening can just go to slotcheck.com and download the app and mess around with it?

That's right. Yep. Download it for free. If you happen to be in Las Vegas this weekend, Halloween weekend, Friday and Saturday, come in, get a player card, link it, and you'll get Slot Check Pro for free for 30 days. Send me an email as well, grant@slotcheck.com, and reach out if you want to set up time to learn more.

Okay, cool. Dan, you have anything coming up in terms of speaking engagements or anything that you're at the mix there?

No, I don't. I'm always taking on new clients who are interested in gaming optimization or post-G2E or thinking about their product or technology strategies going into next year. And folks can find me on LinkedIn or email me at dan@dcgamingllc.com.

All right, gents. Well, thank you both so much-

Thank you, Nick.

... for your time today. And on that '26 breakout year, we certainly wish you the best on this, Grant. We're cheering you on. No doubt about it.

Thank you.

It's a product I just love from the very beginning, so we wish you all the success in the world getting this baby ramped up.

Well, it takes a village, so I appreciate all the support. And a big thank you to Lake of the Torches, Red Wind and Adriana at Silver Sevens and the whole team there. It is hard to innovate.

That's Bill, Conrad and Adriana. Is that the three?

That's right.

Okay. All great people, all early adopters on stuff.

Yeah. Of course, can't do it without them. So yeah, looking for more innovators.

Perfect, perfect. Okay. Well, thank you so much, gents. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Dan. Good seeing you.

Thank you.