Page 12 - Southern California Gaming Guide • January 2021

What a year! 2020 will remain a defining year for us all. Who saw last year at this More Hold-and-Re-Spin Hot Slots
time that a pandemic would sweep across the globe and affect the United States
with the highest mortality rate of any country and bring a series of lock downs to businesses in ways some will never recover. Southern Californians have braved the past ten months, trying to adjust to a new reality that has now become a way of personal and business life.
It’s a testament to California tribal government casinos’ resilience that their properties adjusted and retooled within the two to three months they were closed (from the end of March to May) to reopen with state-of-the-art safety and health practices and guidelines that will likely remain through 2021 and perhaps beyond.
So, what will be new in Southern California casinos in 2021? Read on to find out what we think are the possibilities for 2021. A few are obvious, some are calculated guesses, and a few are hopes and wishes.
Safety Guidelines Here to Stay
The Southern California casino of 2021 is filled with plexiglass dividers, UVC light sanitation,
and a reconfiguration of slot floors into
clusters to create social distancing, or with turning off every other slot machine. It’s become paramount that casinos continue to
make safety their number one priority. Four safety requirements will remain in place when you visit a Southern California casino for the foreseeable future: Temperature checks before you enter the casino, Face- covering/mask wearing, Six-foot social distancing, and Hand washing/sanitizing frequently. See page 10 of this issue, Safety First, which is now a monthly feature, for casino safety guidelines.
Cashless Gaming
Is this the year we’ll see at least the option for cashless gaming—using cards and mobile phones instead
of cash? The worldwide cashless
trend may finally reach casinos
because of the events of 2020, and find a foothold in 2021. The ways to achieve cashless, contact-free transactions on the casino floor are varied. Payment technology supplier and slot maker, Everi has a variety of mobile wallets, cashless wagering accounts that allow players to use their smart phones to pay for their play at the casino, including QuikTicket POS Debit, Ticket from Wallet, Chips from Debit, Chips from Wallet, and more. Ultimately, offering cashless gaming is the province of each casino’s gaming commission. Casino players have mixed feelings. Will we really be able to live without the thrill of receiving a fan of $100 bills when we hit a jackpot?
Ask most slot players what they play and the award-winning Lightning LinkTM, Dollar StormTM, or Dragon LinkTM slots from Aristocrat Technologies are likely to be on their list. Just look at this issues’ Big Winners on page 22 and check out the jackpot winners. The “hold-and-re-spin” game is now on many manufacturers’ lists of new releases for this year. We’ll see a variety of new games on casino floors including some form of ”hold and re-spin” in which coins or icons with credit values land on the reels and hold in place for a set number of free re-spins. When another coin lands, the free-spin meter goes back to the beginning, and the feature continues until no spins remain or the entire reel array is filled up for a jackpot—and it can be a hefty one! This feature has been hot for the past few years and, will be everywhere this year.
Slot Reporting IRS Threshold Change
All casino players will look forward to this change. But is it only wishful thinking? The American Gaming Association (AGA)
announced in May 2020 that “As the gaming industry safely reopens and seeks to return to financial health, one critical area of regulatory reform the administration should consider is modernizing the $1,200 slot jackpot reporting threshold, which has
been in place since 1977,” said Bill Miller, President and CEO of the AGA. “The current threshold is outdated and imposes significant compliance burdens on both the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and
the gaming industry.”
In accordance with federal
regulation, when a casino player wins a slot machine jackpot of $1,200 or more, the machine is temporarily taken out of service while the guest is required to complete a w-2g tax reporting form. While slot jackpots have steadily increased
PAGE 12
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
JANUARY 2021