DRGT with Marco Herrera

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

Wonderful. Good morning, Nick. Springtime in Vegas. Can't beat it.

Yeah. We actually have some lovely weather here today. I'm getting the shakes. I'm so shocked. Well, Dan, I'm fresh out of the Casino Operations Summit, which was held in Thessaloniki, Greece last week, a great conference, record setting attendance, and some seriously interesting talks. As we discussed last episode with Lucien, the central themes were navigating and balancing the online and land-based channels, which is a very big topic here in Europe. AI received a fair bit of attention and I was extremely happy to see a lot of player-oriented topics. So understanding them, engineering their experiences, and critically quite a lot of talk about communicating transparently with players. So those are great.

In terms of the talks that really resonated with me, there were a couple. First, as a data guy, I have to give a shout-out to Josh Hutchison at H2 Gaming Capital. I shared a couple of his write-ups with you, Dan. He did a phenomenal job presenting trends and projections in the land-based and online sectors. And so for the listeners, if you don't know Josh and H2, look them up because they're doing some great work there. I also liked one, it was by Riaan Van Rooyen, whose company, the Aria Group, is doing quite a bit of consulting work in Cambodia. And the thrust of his talk was that as an industry, we're outlaying billions on projects without batting an eye, yet even the smallest investments and better understanding and catering to player needs get second shrift at best. So he emphasized that players of consequence really need to be noticed, felt, and remembered. He repeated those verbs frequently, and that investments and practices really need to be better aligned with that imperative. So I really enjoyed his message there. It was quite interesting.

And interestingly enough, that tees up this month's listener question here that we dug out. Before I hit it, let me say that we love to tackle any questions that anybody listening may have. 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's our R-E-E-L-C-A-S-T@reelmetrics.com. Our policy is to keep all questions anonymous, so please don't worry about us revealing your identity. That is not something we do.

Okay, Dan, so this comes from an operator in Germany who asks, "Hello, gentlemen. I followed your talk with Lucien Wijsman about how land-based operators stay relevant, but I missed one point. Our biggest advantage is the personal contact. We can smile at the players, shake their hands and show them that we really care for them. In the industry, we've spoken for years about omnichannel initiatives which are surely important, but should we not also invest more to make our guest interactions much more personalized? For me, the human factor is the most important thing." Okay. So thanks to listener for that question. It's a truly excellent one. And Dan, I have my own thoughts on this one, but I'm far more interested in your perspectives here.

Absolutely. I think it's a great question. At heart, I'm probably still an old school operator. So for me, I really think about the basics of the building blocks of delivering service and the blocking and tackling. I know the industry has changed over the years and certainly in North America, probably everywhere, it's become a little less front of mind in terms of the different levers that people pull. And certainly with hiring challenges and things like that, service maybe isn't what it was decades ago. But for me, I think about it starts with the culture. It starts with, it has to be something that leadership lives and breathes every day and is really embedded in how everybody throughout the organization thinks about. But technology is great, product is great. At the end of the day, especially in high frequency locals casinos, I think service is still the way that folks can differentiate. So keeping it simple, I was always focused on starting in the hiring process. It's much easier to hire people that genuinely care, genuinely have a service bent to how they think about the world than train it. But training is still important.

So I always felt that organizations that have a really structured approach to what is their service philosophy really make a difference. And then inspecting what you expect. So I'm a big believer on whatever you call it, whether it's snapshots or take fives, quick evaluations, ways to deliver feedback on the things that are important to us. So whether that's greeting guests, whether that's using their name, whether that's smiling, whether that's offering a parting pledgetry, whatever they are because things can be different at different properties. The key is that they're genuine. But I'm a true believer that it has to be programmed, and it has to be part of what you do every day.

And maybe in a destination market like Vegas, service is probably a less important piece of the puzzle than it was before. But again, in the high frequency markets, it absolutely is. So for me, differentiation is still about basics of focusing on and living and breathing service every day. I think technology probably plays a huge part. And I think our guest may actually have some insights here on the tech front on how companies are enabling this to personalize and get information on the guests in the hands of team members. But hopefully the answer 10 years ago is still the answer today and it'll still be the answer 10 years from now, which is care about the guests, walk the floor, live and breathe service and treat people well. But I want to know what you think.

Well, for my part, I agree with the listener. That is the advantage of land-based. It is that personal service. And in my case, I have to really translate this to inventory in a way. So yeah, that's what we're all about. It's like doing these really deep dives on player wants and needs and then really serving the product that fulfills them. So that's the way that we really approach it. And I certainly see these variable service levels. Over the course of a year, I go to a lot of casinos and walk a lot of floors. And yeah. When you have that personal attention that really pops out of there, you do feel seen, you do feel remembered, and it is an absolutely core advantage that the land-based scene has. So yeah. I think it's a great question. I like your response to it. And yeah, my job is to try to translate this into inventory and make it happen on the product side. I completely agree there, just making things relevant for people and being clear with them. I think it's great.

And indeed, let's get to today's guest because I agree with you here. So this gentleman began his gaming industry career around 20 years ago with Bally/Scientific Games where he spent 14 years and last served as a senior vice president and managing director of their EMEA division. After side games, he made the leap into ETGs, serving as president of EMEA for Interblock. And these days, he is the chief executive officer of gaming systems provider, DRGT. I'm referring, of course, to Mr. Marco Herrera. Marco, how are things down in Belgium today?

I must say it's a beautiful day in Oostende today. Actually a rare thing, but it's actually sunny. A lot of tourists out. So a wonderful day in Belgium today.

Okay. Great. Now, one of the things I didn't mention in the intro is that you're a bit of a polyglot. So do I have it right? Are you trilingual, English, French, Spanish? Is that the breakdown?

I am, Nick. And as you'll learn, as we discuss, the polyglot technology and gaming really all came together to put me where I am today. And it's an accidental thing, quite honestly.

Okay. Well, yeah, let's start there. And I know your industry history goes all the way back to your childhood. So can you maybe give us a brief breakdown of your industry training?

This is a bit of a long story, Nick, so I'll try not to be too long-winded. Yeah. My mother's side of the family were entertainers. So my two uncles had Latin bands, one of them quite successful in the '50s and '60s. So my Uncle Poopi was actually on the Jack Paar Show in New York City in the '50s. And in '54 and '55, he was actually the first band of what you could consider The Tonight Show.

Was it like big band fair? Was it that type of-

Well, you know how you had the comic relief and the band like you do today on most of these shows? Well, he was the Latin band and he did all the music for Jack Paar for the Jack Paar Show.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And he was also the comic relief. He was quite a funny guy. And on that show also was Betty Clooney, George's aunt. And at some point, Poopi and Betty fell in love and they got married. And when that happened, Jack Paar kicked him out of the show in 1956. And so my uncle ended up moving to Miami with the entire family to headline in the Fontainebleau in Miami. His brother was also a Latin band leader and he became a stockbroker and he was an avid golf player. And he used to play golf with somebody that became one of his best friends, a gentleman by the name of Clifford Perlman who owned a chain of restaurants called Lum's at the time. Lo and behold, in I think 1969, Clifford ends up buying Caesars Palace from Jace Arnold. So when Jace Arnold lost his license, Clifford moved to Las Vegas, bought Caesars Palace, and he started Caesar's World. At that point, my entire family moved to Las Vegas, so around 1969. And I was maybe eight years old the first time I said foot in Las Vegas and then I would go there every summer and spend time there. The first time I actually lived there was 1972. We're talking maybe ... I don't think there were 300,000 people even in Las Vegas at the time. Caesars was a big thing, right?

And I was an international kid living all over the place, which is why I'm a polyglot. I grew up in Latin America and in the United States and eventually moved to France when I was 13 years old. And so my mother eventually became in charge of the Caesars World office in Caracas, Venezuela when we were living there. And then she would bring junkets, players over to Las Vegas and to Reno, to Lake Tahoe. And that was really my first exposure to that. So I just remember flying to Las Vegas, getting in the Rolls Royce literally when my uncle would pick us up and drive us downtown to see all the lights and sitting there watching all the wonders at Caesar's Palace at the time and just being around it all the time. But I also remember my mother telling me not to end up in the casino business, which is the funny thing about it. Get a degree. Both my parents were academics. Get a degree, don't end up dealing cards or being in the casino business. But I counted 21 relatives at Caesar's at one point. It was just they were everywhere.

Wow.

So I'd come to Vegas and I knew all these people working in the casino. That's where I spent a lot of time. And they were also gamblers, all of them. So I grew up around a lot of gambling, saw the good and the bad, but it's in my veins. So lo and behold, I end up in Las Vegas. I ended up with a computer science and math degree, not in the gaming industry. I did some work as a computer scientist for some of the gaming companies. I ended up developing video games for some time. I was a Nintendo and Sega developer and then ended up spending 12 years in the pawn shop business.

Yep.

In the pawn industry.

What I have to say is every time we're in an event together, sooner or later, I end up asking you all kinds of questions about how that industry works. It's fascinating. We could do a podcast just on that, I think.

Oh, no. And if you're a Las Vegas, you know about Superpawn, right? So I worked for Steve Mack, the founder and owner of Superpawn for 12 years. I was the CTO and CIO of that company. And in 2004, we sold it. Okay. Had a little bit of a venture there for a couple of years. And then I hear about this position at Bally where they're looking for a French speaker who knows a certain technology and knows a little bit about gaming. And I go, "Well, I have to apply for that job. It seems like the perfect fit." So that was the beginning of my 20 years now in the gaming industry.

Okay. Yeah. Great. Cool. And now DRGT, it's a company that I've known since the very, very, very early days, well before it was called DRGT, now has installs across 40 countries and some 1,400 individual locations. But obviously you tend to concentrate on markets outside of North America. And so some of our listeners in, let's say US and Canada may not be overly familiar with the company. So can you give us a quick rundown of your product offerings, your principal markets and your value props?

Yeah. Let me give you a little bit of history before that also on that. I know you know this. So DRGT was born out of a system that Jurgen De Munck created a few decades ago, and then eventually he bought SIP from WMS at Systems in Progress. And at the time, Systems in Progress was known as the serverless solution, which was still at the core of what DRGT is today. So the idea was that the end game hardware itself was a server. And so every piece of hardware that you put on a machine was a server synchronizing across a network and maintaining all of the information that was needed for all of the machines in that segment that was being followed. Today it still works that way.

So it started that way. Clearly that technology was very appropriate for jackpot systems. Started developing more into the jackpot systems because it was very ... Bing that it was serverless, it was a fairly inexpensive solution that you can connect either in a LAN or in a WAN. It didn't really matter. The architecture stood regardless of whether it was a local network or whether you were doing this across sites. And we managed many, many jackpot systems because of that over the years in South Africa and Switzerland and Northern Cyprus and different places. And it's the core of what the technology is in terms of the slot system. But clearly in order to get into other markets, we needed to develop all the functionalities the casinos need. At the time, Jurgen was a competitor of mine. He was in what I'll call the secondary markets. So a lot of markets in Eastern Europe, certainly markets in LATAM, the smaller casinos in general. And then a few years ago, he had a major breakthrough when he started to install the very large casinos in Northern Cyprus, which is one of our bigger markets. So there we proved the concept that we can do thousands of machines with this technology. It didn't really matter that we had the table functionalities, all the patron management stuff, all the things that are needed to manage a modern casino.

I joined in 2024 really with the idea of taking it more to some of the mainstream markets. So I'd love to have some impact in the US eventually. We've just entered France, which is the biggest market in Europe, I would argue in terms of traditional casinos.

Oh, certainly.

But certainly the solution holds up no matter what the size of the casino, and it's a very reliable, complete solution.

Yeah. Cool. And one of the more unique things about DRGT, something maybe everybody knows, is that you actually own and operate a number of your own casinos and slot halls throughout I think both Latin America and Europe. So can you explain how you can leverage this into your product offerings? I have no doubt you're doing it.

Listen, there are a few things. I like to say we have three verticals and Jurgen was actually my distributor of Bally Machines in Belgium. So he started as a systems company, then got more into distribution. From that, learned a lot about slots, about performance, because he was having to deal with that. Short hop into operating for others. So he would manage casino floors with the slots that he would provide in Belgium, and that led to opportunities to purchase casinos. And so those are really the three verticals. We're about to open our seventh casino so we have two casinos in Belgium. We have three in Mexico, one in France, and a second one in France is going to open in the next two months.

Now, the advantage to me, I'm actually sitting inside of Casino Oostende. So the DRGT offices are in the casino. The advantage to me is you bring everything together. We understand the operation side very well. The software I can test here locally. So we vet everything in our own properties before we release it. And we're very actively bringing people to the casino to see the environment. We're quite unique in that we are 100% cashless. I think you know this, but we've been running cashless casinos for over two decades now.

Yeah. It seems like a huge advantage. And I always have my operator hat on. You're in a unique position because you're provider and operator as well. But as an operator, I don't know if you agree with this, but it seems like sometimes there's a disconnect where providers are designing technology, bringing it to market, designing it in a way that they think is the way that operators want it. And then operators say, "Hey, that's great. I want something like that, but that doesn't exactly fit my needs." So the ability to really be designing to what you as an operator want to see seems like a massive advantage in bridging that gap and being more innovative and being more creative and actually understanding, hey, the end user, how are they going to use this? And what is the value and what are the pain points going to be? Do you think that's a competitive advantage for you?

Dan, I think it is a competitive advantage, but it's a really great point because as a system developer, and especially when you're in multiple countries ... We have 85,000 slots connected in various places right now. There is no unique operator model is the thing that I've come to learn. So certainly the way you operate a hundred slot slot hall or a 300 slot casino in Cambodia and Vietnam, in Europe, somewhere else is not going to be the same as a 3000 or 10,000 slot casino in the US, right? But certainly staying close to the operator, understanding the operational flow. And it's something that quite honest, I learned in the pawn shops because we were developing software for ourselves and we wanted to be the best operator. So it's about the efficiency, the number of clicks. The servicing of the customer has to be the priority and not the technology. So at the end of the day, that drives us, the efficiencies on the operation side drive us.

If I could describe a little bit the ecosystem here, in order to enter the casino stand, as an example, you must register. It's 100% carded play. You must pass a gate so that we know that everyone comes in. We have restaurants in the casino that people come to eat and they don't necessarily play, but they still must register to enter. And we convert about, I don't know, 30% of those into players, into patrons. But we know everything that happens. We know every little detail of what they do when they enter. We can cater our offers directly to the best players. We don't waste comps, promotional points. They're very, very targeted. So it really allows us to reward our best players. They notice it, they like it, and it's really changed the interaction. But it also allows us to focus on the customer service piece, the piece you guys were talking about early. So obviously in 343 machines we have here in Oostende it's easier to do that. But here, the casino director knows all the best players by name. They're greeted. We have interaction with them constantly. We see them at the restaurant every day, they come and eat, we know them, and it's a huge advantage.

Yeah. Now, Marco, you're describing something there that maybe some of the North American listeners aren't familiar with. And that is that with very few exceptions, when you go into, let's say, European casinos, for just one example, there's always this controlled reception. So basically people need to check in, typically show their passport, get a record created on them and move forward. And I suppose within that environment, it's no accident that cashless really took off more so in that environment than it does in those where it's just in Vegas where it's just a free for all people walk in. And in your experience, do you think that controlled reception is really a necessary condition for cashless?

Listen, the decision to go cashless in our casinos was not based on that. And I think Jurgen really wanted to take the risk of doing that and seeing what the results are. But clearly when you're talking about a casino in the Las Vegas strip, it's not a realistic approach because you have so many tourists coming in. The majority of the players are not going to be repeat visits. And that changes a little bit, the thought process in terms of what you need to do. In a locals casino, I think it's a perfect solution, but you have to take that leap. And I think the US operators have been shy and feel that it's too big of a risk. We felt it was risky when the decision was made here, but it really took about three weeks for customers to adapt. It was a non-issue.

Gotcha. Cool. Well, one thing that certainly strikes me about your product portfolio is ... And you alluded to this earlier. Just how comprehensive it is. You have modules basically covering almost everything. So you mentioned slots, tables, cage, reception, dispatch, FMB, marketing, you're using the facial rec stuff, cashless and integrated jackpot stuff, as you mentioned earlier, it's known for this. So let's focus on these last two things, the cashless and the jackpot technology because I'm really, really interested in this. So can you maybe break out a couple just notable applications, these technologies that your customers have out there?

Let me touch on a couple of things. Often these things are driven by regulatory requirements. So for example, in Belgium, you need to do shared jackpots, something that's fairly unique. So anytime a jackpot is hit, it's usually split 80/20. So the winner of the jackpot gets 80 and all the other players that are on that machine are going to get 20% of that split depending on their activity on the machine. That's required by law. So it's one of the things we had to include very early on. And touching back on the cash list, Nick, we like to see ourselves as a creator. We have a lot of hardware guys also creating things for us. And when you see one of our casinos, the kiosk, the ATM, the cash machines, all those, we create them. So they integrate perfectly into the cashless environment. There's really no integration because it's already built with that in mind. So if you were to see the floor in the casino here, every piece of hardware you see is ours. And the jackpots, we also do the Swiss jackpots. So we do the white area network for all the Swiss casinos. We do something similar in Northern Cyprus for Merit, which is one of our big customers there.

So we manage a lot of places where we were doing, at some point, the white area network for the white area for Sun International in South Africa. We can sell the solution as just a progressive solution, whether it's a local area or a white area Progressive. We can do that. The hardware being so inexpensive and not requiring servers allows us to really be very configurable and adaptable to the situation.

Yeah. Gotcha.

On the cashless side, what is the player experience? I imagine a lot of it's driven by the regulation, but is it a traditional casino resort wallet that a guest is funding or is it something else?

Yeah. So the cashless is a built-in thing for us. So when you get an account, when you register, automatically, that is your wallet, right? You can fund your wallet in several different ways, Dan here so you can go ... We disable the bill acceptors on the machines until you tap in. You tap in with your card, identify yourself, then you can put bills in the machine and fund your wallet that way. You can go to the cash desk at the cage and you can fund your wallet there. You can go to a kiosk and fund it there. Last week we released the payment system integrated into our app here in Oostende so you can with a credit card fund your wallet as well on the app and that travels with you to any of our locations.

Oh, cool. And is the interface for the player generally just like a mag stripe card or an FID card or a phone? What do you typically use in that?

We use our FID. We can also use the phone now. So we can use the phone with the QR code. And I'm working on the tap and play with the phone, so you'll be able to take your phone and just touch the screen and basically log in. We try to make that as frictionless as possible. So we want that interaction to be very easy, very quick. Today, most people get the card and they just tap and play. They come over to the screen, there's a little icon there to tap, they tap, that's all they have to do, and then they start their player session.

Okay. Cool. And Marco, in the cashless implementations, are most of your customers going from cash and coin, cash and ticket? Where are they coming from typically when you're-

It's ticket and ticket out. So I think most of the market here has gone ticket in ticket out in the last two decades. Most of the transitions are from ticket in ticket out to cashless. And we can do hybrid, but we'd rather do it all at once. But it's very difficult to convince operators to do that. And Dan, I would extend the invitation. You're welcome in Oostende anytime you want to see it because I bring customers from the US here. I bring customers from everywhere here. There's a lot of conversation about cashless in the US, but my feeling is that nobody really knows what that means.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

We talk about that all the time.

It's like, come look at it. So I brought a few people from the US here and I said, "Listen, here's your card, go play, let me know tomorrow how it went." And they're amazed by it because because it's a very seamless process.

Yeah. Can I ask you ... Because I get asked all the time about crypto and people ask, "Hey, is there demand for crypto as a source of funds?" And honestly, I don't see it, at least here in the States and I don't hear it, but the question keeps coming up. Is that something that is becoming part of the ecosystem where you operate or is this something you hear operators asking for?

Hey, listen, Dan, in my mind, that's a matter of the regulations around it, right?

Yeah.

But certainly we're seeing it. So in markets like Northern Cyprus, which are very light on the regulation, crypto's a big thing. And they're bringing in players from Russia and other places and crypto's huge there. So there are certainly markets that are legit markets where crypto is starting to take off and grow. We do get demand for it. And so we are talking to some payment providers that allow us to do a crypto transfer into the wallet because I think it is part of the future. Is it here tomorrow? No, I don't think so. Not in the mainstream markets, but I do see it growing for sure.

And Dan, interesting that you should mention that because I think I was in Resorts World, as I recall, on Vegas, and I bumped into a crypto kiosk. Have you seen these around town?

I haven't seen it. I know what you're talking about. I don't remember seeing it on the strip. I'm sure you did. It sounds like it's something that's completely independent from the gaming experience. It's basically an ATM as opposed to something that's embedded in the gaming system.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's the only thing I've seen around, to be honest, in the live environment, but I just saw it in passing. I wasn't sure what it is. But yeah, it struck me as the same. Maybe it's just to withdraw against coin.

I know there's at least one tribal environment. I think maybe Oklahoma, there's an operator who launched it as part of their ecosystem in the last year, but beyond that, I'm not aware of anything out here.

Well, it's interesting to me. There's a lot of emphasis on AML in Europe. Nick, you know that, but I think it's worldwide, it's going to take off, but in Europe it's really hitting hard. Following cash is very difficult. So cash is going away. There's certain casinos in Europe that want to go completely cashless, but no bills. So it's going to be all transactions that can be traced. And crypto can be traced, certainly. Any credit card transaction can be traced, any bank transfer can be traced. And those things are becoming more and more important in my mind.

Sure. And one of the things I ... And I'm sure you hear this question all the time on this, Marco, but operators asking, okay, what increments can we expect if we go from tickets to cashless? Do you have some rough numbers on that front?

I think I'll go back to what Dan said earlier, which I believe in wholeheartedly and you said, Nick. It's an offering, right?

Yeah.

So it's hard to say. We had double-digit increases after we went cashless. I can't attribute that to cashless because we changed all of the slots.

Sure. That can make a difference.

We spent a lot of time trying to optimize the floor, get the latest products, optimize the system, optimize the experience of the user, pay more attention to the user. And I'm also a big believer in the human service piece that's essential. Improving our restaurants. We have restaurants that have very good quality offerings at a low price. All of these things that are not necessarily moneymakers, but they're important to maintain a customer base and offer a complete experience to the user. So you walk in here, you even have automated lockers. So with your player card, you go to a locker, you get a locker, you leave your stuff. It's all automated.

Oh, that's a cool-

Those things don't necessarily ... Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So it's an integrated locker system, so you can just drop your bag in there or whatever and go. Oh, that's cool.

But we try to integrate everything with the player to make it very frictionless and make their experience very ... They want to play. They want to be on the floor.

Sure. Okay. And I also want to just touch upon your ... So I know the guy who's behind most of your jackpot technology very well way back. And I was just looking through your site and I see all kinds of different jackpot options there. Time-based, Coinbase, progressed, et cetera. So I imagine this is just a huge part of every system install you have.

Well, you know that I've looked at many systems over the years. When I first saw the internals of DRGT and I looked at the configuration screens for the jackpots, I was lost. There's dozens and dozens of different options and configurations for jackpots. It's quite extensive. And it's growing because people think of different ideas of what they want to do with jackpots and we continue to add to it. But it's extremely complete solution in terms of jackpots.

Yeah. It looks like it goes all the way down to the player level. Both mysteries and progressive-

Sure. You can configure all of the different criteria to the player level, to the player tier level, to the machine level, whatever you want to do. All of those things are in there.

Wow. Okay. Cool. And so I guess just in terms of your experience around the globe, Marco, you worked in North America, EMEA, Latin America, Asia, you obviously see how international operators approach CMS offerings a bit differently than they do in North America. Yeah. Just thinking of that one, what do you feel North American operators could really learn from these types of installs out there?

I think it's a little bit different when you're managing a small casino and a large casino.

Of course.

We open here with four people during the day, which is amazing.

Wow.

So up until the tables open, there aren't that many people here. It's less than half a dozen.

Incredible.

And I think that's a big thing. So the efficiencies of a small operator, I think that there is a lesson to be learned there. I think some of the larger casinos are probably struggling with their employee costs. It's a challenge. That's one thing. The cashless environment, the risk taken to introduce new things, maybe I think the US operators are a little bit more hesitant to do that than some of these small operators. They always want to try different things and they drive us. Our clients drive us to change and add functionality to the system constantly.

Yeah. So on the cashless front, we do see a bit more adoption of this. I think in the US, some of these are a little bit convoluted from my perspective.

Well, the challenge when you look at some of the providers in the US is the cashless and the payment systems there's tiers of people involved in that. And for us, it's included in the system. So other than having to get a credit card provider, a payment system provider that we can integrate, everything else is in our system. And in the US, you have a number of operators that'll just provide the cashless piece or provide the payment piece, which makes it, first of all, more expensive and a little bit more difficult to integrate because then they got to talk to the system provider to integrate those things into the system. And as you know, a lot of the big system providers don't really want to spend their time doing that. They want to try to sell their stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. And on the regulation front, for sure in the US, it is a bit of a hornet's nest. It's tough because you're dealing with a lot of different layers of regulation for sure. But yeah.

It seems like the route market in the US that's growing leaps and bounds, it doesn't really have a lot of fully fleshed out solutions on player tracking and gaming is an area that down the road you may or may not be interested in. Because when you talk about your mesh network, the cost of servers for a lot of ... I have five electronic games at my establishment. It's prohibitive. And how do you get people paid? Someone coming out behind the counter, the whole cashless aspect. Is that a market outside of the US that you're in as well, or is that a market you think about?

Listen, we're in many markets like that, Dan. That market in the US is probably one of the most attractive segments for me because I think that we are a perfect fit for it. But ultimately, I think the challenge there ... In-game hardware seems to be the big challenge always. "Oh, I got to change my hardware." Ultimately, if you're going to do a route business, do you want to do player tracking? Do you want to put the screens in? What do you want to do them? Certainly the serverless technology, the mesh network is perfect in terms of that and we can do that. So we're in places where we only do accounting or accounting ticket in ticket out, but to me, if you want to be competitive, if you're in a competitive market, you really have to spend a lot of time thinking about the patron. It's the most important thing.

Hey, Marco, open-ended question here, so please forgive it, but answer this however you want. But really curious, casino gaming a year from now, is there an innovation that you think the industry will be talking about or maybe not even you think? Is there an innovation that you hope the industry will be talking about?

Listen, AI certainly has a place for every system provider in the future. Is it the thing that's going to change everything? I'm not so sure. Ultimately, the algorithms for customer segmentation, for identifying your best customers, all of those things have importance, but there are many other ways to do that. It comes down to analysis and statistics. So what is AI really doing there other than that? It's just applying that same old recency, frequency, monetary value of the customer to identify and rank them in some other algorithms. I don't think that's revolutionary in my mind. It's just something that's been around other industries for many years. The AI twist, I could argue it's a little bit of a hype, but certainly has value and it cannot be ignored. Will cashless take out in the big markets like North America? I thought COVID was going to do that. It seemed like there was some momentum there after that, but it seemed to die off a little bit.

Is advantage play in slots something that's front of mind that you talk about?

Not really. Not really. I think what we're seeing also is a trend. We've been hearing about omnichannel for many years now. We're starting to see a trend. We'll see how it works out. Of bringing the online games to the slot cabinets. And so there are several companies. Swiss Casinos is doing that. Some others are doing that. We'll have to wait and see how that works out. How do you capture that online player and bring them into the land-based? The games are different. I think we'll have to give that some time to really determine if that's the right thing to do or not, but we're starting to see that trend around us quite a bit.

Perfect. Well, while we have you, is there anything that you want to plug or promote?

Listen, G2E Asia, we'll be there in a couple of weeks. We're trying to organize a few different events next year. Maybe the next time we talk, we'll have something concrete. But the biggest thing for me is an open invitation. Reach out to me to come to Casino Oostende, see a cashless environment. I think it's really important for operators to see for themselves how this works. Not in a theoretical way, not in a layered way, but an ecosystem that's built entirely for that, I think is really different experience for the player.

Yeah. Cool. Well, guys, I think that pretty much wraps up what we were hoping to get through today. Marco, it was absolutely lovely seeing you last week and thanks for coming on and spending time with us today. We really, really appreciate your time and your story. This is great stuff.

My pleasure, Nick. Anytime. And Dan, it was really nice to meet you finally. I've heard your name so many times. Hopefully I'll meet you in Vegas next time. Sorry. I have a house in Las Vegas. I moved there in '81, so I've been a Las Vegas resident for many, many years now.

So if one of those flash floods comes in Vegas, Dan, and wipes out your house, you got another place to go, man.

Yeah. Sounds great.

Okay, gents. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you.

All right. Take care, guys.