INFLIGHT GAMING: Place your bets 13 MAR 2014: It’s almost ten years already since Ryanair’s pugnacious, ‘say anything for some free ink’ CEO, Michael O’Leary, first proclaimed his belief that it was only a matter of time before revenues from in-flight gambling would render airfares obsolete. Dubbed ‘the Godfather of ancillary revenues’, Mister O’Leary has also publicly mused on such things as ‘pay to pee’ onboard toilets, ‘pay what you weigh’ fares and ‘standing room only’ sections on his Boeing 737s. Thanks to an ever-gullible press corps all got lots of coverage but, not surprisingly, like the gambling prediction none of them have ever become realities – yet. While the last three ideas are highly unlikely, I wouldn’t write off the possibility of in-flight gambling just yet - the stakes are just too high. When one considers what casino revenues add to the cruise industry’s bottom line – the last figure I saw had it around 24 percent – then it’s easy to see why airlines salivate at the idea of in-flight gambling. Unfortunately there are some significant legal barriers, not the least of which is the FAA’s 1994 ‘Gorton Amendment which, “prohibits any air carrier from installing, transporting, operating or permitting the use of any gambling device on an aircraft.” Just to be sure there are no misunderstandings it continues with, “As a result, gambling is banned on all international aircraft flying into or out of the United States.” While there would seem to be plenty of legal wiggle-room to fight this imperious “we are the world” US mandate, to date no carrier seems to have had the stomach for it. That said, Michael O’Leary didn’t build one of the words most successful airlines based on bluster alone, and hasn’t given up on his dream of getting his hands on some serious gaming dosh. While the in-flight version is still blocked by a lot of outdated international laws, he has discovered that there’s nothing to stop him from doing it on the ground: so, with a surprisingly (by O’Leary standards) limited amount of fanfare, Ryanair announced a “strategic alliance” with Dublin-based online gaming provider ‘888 Holdings’. This is where it gets really clever. Ryanair and 888 plan to leverage the discount carrier’s website and its more than 1.4 million average daily hits, by offering a chance to win a future flight voucher. To play along one simply has to agree to add another couple of pounds to the price of your ticket transaction. Sounds like a worthwhile gamble no? Well maybe. After accepting the terms of the deal you will then be asked to answer a ‘simple general knowledge’ question. So that’s when you win your ticket? Well not quite! If you get the answer correct, as most people who are online at the time will most likely do, the resulting ‘prize’ is that your name will be entered into a drawing for the tickets. And the odds of winning are what? Well, ‘long’ would seem to be the easy answer, as only three lucky winners will be selected per week. By my math, if only 20 percent of weekly visitors to the web site play along, the odds of winning a ticket are around 650,000 to one. For an airline, it certainly appears that Ryanair picked up pretty quickly on the gaming industry mantra of “the house always wins.” In-flight gambling isn’t new. For a short time in the late 80s Singapore Airlines had slot machines on board their Boeing 747s and it was generally considered a huge success with passengers frequently lined up in the aisles waiting to play. However, in order to keep weight to a minimum, the machines had been made of lightweight materials and were constantly breaking. Their popularity also generated a lot of extra work and distraction for the cabin crews, (like issuing paper receipts and crowd control) something that soon raised safety concerns – and as questionable as they were - it was these alleged safety issues that, with flight attendant union backing, became the justification for the Gorton Amendment. But that was twenty years ago in the distant pre-digital/pre-WiFi era. Now with in-flight connectivity becoming the norm and the industry’s new-found appreciation for ancillary revenues, The Gorton Amendment would almost certainly have a hard time withstanding a united lobbying campaign by all the major US carriers. Of course the real story here has nothing to do with airline passengers gaining access to in-flight gaming – with WiFi and an iPad they already have it via any number of internet gaming sites. The trouble is when they go that route it doesn’t earn the airline one red cent! So this is really all about the airlines being freed up to grab their share of the take by way of their own individually hosted gaming sites that would be accessible to every passenger via the airline’s entertainment system. Everyone seems to agree that it’s only a matter of time before the Gorton dam bursts and, like baggage fees, once it does, every carrier will find it hard not to fall in line. Watch for some interesting cross-branding opportunities with the Vegas and Macau set. Could we be in for ‘WestJet by Wynn’ and ‘Caesair Canada’? The possibilities are endless. And when it does happen, the only upsetting thing will be that it gives Michael O’Leary the biggest opportunity of his life to say, “I told you so!” JustTravelDeals.ca
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:14:42 +0000
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