Casinos in Connecticut and Rhode Island have come up with a plan to keep their customers coming in to gamble. With rising gas prices and the economy hurting player’s pocketbooks, casinos have to create new ways to bring in customers and to keep existing customers. The Twin River racino in Rhode Island and Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, have decided that free slot machine play is the way to reach their customers.

Players will be offer coupons in varying amounts to use for free spins on the slot machines. Offers can range from a few hundred dollars down to just a few dollars. Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have tried this before and it did not work, with both casinos losing millions of dollars in slot revenue late last year.

Twin River began their free slot promotion in June with prizes worth as little as $500 and as high as $24,000. The promotion was allowed to start when lawmakers approved the casino to enter the free-play market. Although the two Connecticut casinos saw a loss in revenue due to the promotion, Twin River’s has seen an increase in revenue by 13% in June which is significantly higher than the 5% in May.

It is believed that the idea behind the promotion is that players will come into the casinos, use their coupon for the free spins and then use their own money to continue playing. This is how the casino can make money. The coupon credit may be only for $50 but if a player comes in and uses that coupon and then turns around and spends $100 then the casino has made a $50 profit.



- 2008-08-21