FEATURE: GAMING ROOM DESIGN

Room to grow

Covid taught club operators an invaluable lesson for their gaming rooms: punters prefer space and comfort, writes Vanessa Cavasinni.

DURING THE PEAK of the Covid pandemic, clubs were required to leave 1.5m of space between EGMs on their gaming floors, in line with other social distancing measures. For a lot of clubs, the easiest way to do this was to remove anything from 15 per cent up to 30 per cent of the machines from their gaming floors. Most EGMs have since returned to gaming floors, but the main lesson from those restrictions has not been forgotten.

“Covid proved something that we’ve been telling clients all along, which is that people like space,” states Tony Donnelly of Donnelly Design. “A lot of operators saw the benefits of driving 70 per cent of their floor better was a better return than running the whole floor. It had a fantastically positive effect on turnover and on the player experience.”

Creating ample space for players has been a boon for Club Urunga’s gaming room.

While clubs may be back to running their gaming rooms at full capacity, many have calculated that taking square meterage from other areas of the club to create more space for their gaming rooms, with 1.2m between machine bases, offering smaller gaming bank configurations and additional privacy screens, has not only increased player comfort but gaming-room turnover as well.

Personal space

At Club Urunga on the Mid North Coast of NSW, the gaming room hadn’t had a significant update since 2012. During covid, to meet the 1.5m restrictions, Club Urunga dropped its active EGMs down from 53 to 39. Much to general manager Mark Parry’s surprise, turnover improved. Granted, there was more money in the economy domestically, but Parry says the extra comfort of the space had a lot to do with it.

So, last year, he engaged Donnelly Design to update the gaming room, extending it by 30sqm to create the extra space that was clearly desired by the bowling club’s punters.

“I have been on other bowling club boards before I moved into operations again, and the one thing covid showed us was that the old thinking about gaming rooms – i.e. get the smallest footprint you possibly can and jam them in there because people will still have a bet – that no longer really applied,” explains Parry.

“What it was, was ensuring the safety, health and comfort of your patrons, and then they were far happier and the turnover improved. Essentially ‘happy punter, more turnover.’”

Since creating that extra space, Parry has had a lot of positive feedback from members.

“I’ve had a lot of comments from women in particular since the room has opened that they enjoy the space around them – not feeling crowded in, not feeling intimidated or being elbow to elbow with people.

Creating personal space and stations was a focus for Western Suburbs Leagues Club.

“The general consensus we were getting back was that people were happier. People will just generally spend longer doing something that is more comfortable… and results have flowed from there.”

In terms of the design, Club Urunga’s gaming room aesthetic has gone for a ‘Brisvegas’ style with flashy lights and a colour scheme to make the machines pop. To meet a strict budget, the existing carpet was retained, as was much of the original cabling.

“We’re still a small country club and have to take that into account when it comes to design,” explains Parry.

Ready for anything

No one was prepared for how Covid would affect venues when it hit, but now Mark Parry has made sure Club Urunga’s gaming room layout is ready for any other foreseeable change in trading regulations in the future.

“We’re fully compliant with the harshest Covid rules that they had, so my gaming can stay open under any new public health threat that can be reasonably foreseen,” he says. “If that’s as hard as they went with covid – and they went pretty hard as far as I’m concerned – I’m compliant going forward, so I’m ready for it.”

A personal experience

At Western Suburbs Leagues Club in Sydney’s south-west, one part of its gaming floor had just begun a major renovation when lockdowns were first announced in March 2020. When gaming rooms were allowed to re-open with little notice, an ad hoc gaming and outdoor area was thrown together while the final plans for the space were finalised. That floor design was realised in October this year.

“We wanted to make it more luxurious, more spacious, to clean it up and make it fit with the rest of the floor,” explains Wests Group Macarthur gaming manager Christie Sciberras.

The new layout has plenty of space and the detailed fit-out maximises player comfort and privacy. There are new, intricately-patterned privacy screens and more of them. Raised hobs – so players don’t have to lean down for their drink or phone – are installed between machines, as are smaller moveable privacy screens, set up between the two sides of banked configurations. USB chargers are also inlaid into the hobs, as are handbag cubbies.

Bill Smith of Design Group, who completed the fit-out and joinery for Western Suburbs Leagues Club’s renovation, says all those personal amenities for the player help add to the enjoyment of the experience.

“We’re putting handbag cubbies in, we’re putting charger stations in, we’re doing slide-out privacy screens between players, giving them the option to play with a friend next to them or on their own. It’s just creating options for the ultimate VIP space,” explains Smith.

A similar approach was taken at Club Urunga, where a lot of investment was made into the personal player experience.

“They took the approach of essentially operating like a big pub in their gaming room. So, they gave the same amenities to their players that we would do in a high-end hotel in Sydney,” states Donnelly.

“The players all got a one-metre bench, they got a 300mm raised hob which has a little spot to put their handbag and space to put their drink. It’s got a wireless phone charger built into the top of it. So, it’s like a little business-class booth for each player.”

For Sciberras, accommodating every type of player was important.

“We wanted something with a more luxurious feel that would accommodate everyone. So different areas accommodate how you would want to play. There are some quite private areas and some not-soprivate areas,” she says.

“We also tried to support as many different combinations of games that you can play inside or outside, whether you are a smoker or non-smoker, you get to have the same games wherever you play. We’ve still got some older-style machines that people love and we’ve got the newer stuff as well.”

To help attract members to Western Suburbs Leagues Club’s newest gaming solution, Sciberras has also recently installed LED screens in the space, plus added a 3x1.6m Multi-Terminal Gaming Monitor. While it’s still early days, Sciberras says members like the personal touches that enhance their experience.

“Overall, we’ve had great feedback. They like the space, they like the new design and the new additions.”

Back in style

At Creative Commercial Furniture, a supplier of furniture for the hospitality industry, including gaming, Brett Davison has found that old trends have begun to re-emerge for gaming room furniture.

“We’re finding that people are actually going back to the velour-look materials, which is interesting. It goes back a long time. We’re getting a lot of enquiries for that kind of finish for the tub chairs,” he says.

The gaming room at North Burleigh SLSC.

“For stools, we look to the European Union for quality. We’ve found that stainless steel bases are also coming back into vogue, which is great from our point of view, because we do get longevity out of those as opposed to your standard steel, powder-coated stools.”

And after a couple of years of beige and bone coloured furniture being in vogue, Davison says operators are returning to more practical darker colours for their gaming furniture.

“You get a couple years less use out of lighter colours, when you get dirty marks over the chairs, and in the end they’re all having to be re-upholstered or replaced. Whereas your darker fabrics tend to hide that.”

In the end, Davison suggests that whatever you go for, make sure it’s the highest quality you can afford. It will last you longer and will be less of an outlay long term.

Bang for your buck

According to Donnelly, the higher performance of pub gaming rooms has forced clubs to compete and adapt at a rate like never before. Where in the past clubs may not have refreshed their gaming solutions for a decade, both Donnelly and Smith now suggest that gaming rooms should have a refresh every 5-7 years to maintain their appeal for players who have competing options nearby.

“With country towns as the exception, clubs are so geographically evenly spread that every club has a competitor within 5-8 minutes’ drive to them. So, if you’re the only one who hasn’t done it, you’re behind,” says Donnelly. “Clubs have a real healthy competition in that regard, in that they’ll always be trying to do at least what their competitors are doing.”

With that, however, comes a decent outlay that has increased dramatically in recent years. If you compared what was spent on a renovation per seat in 2005 versus 2022, even adjusted for inflation you’d be looking at spending 3-5 times as much money on a fit-out. But the ROI can be well worth it. Donnelly points to Club Urunga as a prime example.

“That’s a big cost for a club like that, so they’ve gone out on a limb and spent that higher amount per seat and they got a really good result out of it. The end result is that they took a great leap up from being just a coastal club, to being a club with a real point of difference to even the big guys around them, and I think it really works for them.

“And I’ll always pay credit there to the operator because some club managers, and especially their boards, if they’re not overly confident they will hold on to their money, but others will take a real chance and benefit from it. So that was a really good one.”