Alright, I have no idea if this will provide anyone with any value or give them anything to think about that is useful, but I need to get my New Jersey betting experience off of my chest as it is driving me up the wall thinking about it. Thread below...

As a bit of pretext. In the past decade, I have spent A LOT of time in the produce space for gaming. From 2010-2015 with sportsbooks and 2015 - 2018 with slots, electronic table games and lottery. I am not reverting back to sportsbook with a couple of projects.

In designing a gambling product, experience, location, shop - anything - there are three main points that EVERYTHING must revolve around.

Speed
Isolation
Continuity

You will never ever find a gambling product that is successful which does not hit all three of these out of park.

Speed:

Customers are there to gamble. The number of barriers, questions and decisions that stand between the money in their pocket and the transaction should be as close to 0 as possible. The fewer there are, the more successful the product/experience will be for BOTH parties.

Isolation:

Customers are there to gamble. Once a player has made a bet, the main focus of an operator is to maximize the experience of the bet by allowing the player to focus ONLY on the bet. Fewer distractions means a better product/experience will be for BOTH parties.

Continuity:

Customers are there to gamble. Once a bet is made and the outcome is decided, the process of making another bet should be as simple as possible with as few barriers to do so as possible. The easier the process is, the better the product/experience will be.

If a gaming machine, establishment, product - anything - can hit Speed, Isolation and Continuity there is ZERO reason that whatever it is will not be successful. In terms of design for gambling every second of work should be focused on these three areas. Period.

Let's look at a model example @SuperBookUSA.

Speed is simple. The place is WIDE open with enormous ceilings. The odds screen is so big you can see it from Golden Steer in Rancho Sereno. Bettors walk in, they see the odds, the teller is directly in-front of their eyes. Done.

Isolation is executed perfectly too. All of the TV's are located on the same spot on the one wall. No matter where you sit within the book, you can see the TV's. If you want more isolation, you can take a booth that has side walls and a private screen. VIP room for ultimate iso.

People mistake isolation for solitude. Solitude is slots (different topic). Isolation is the connection between you and your bet. What do you hear, what do you see? Because the TV's are ALL in the same spot and elevated you can sit and not move for hours and hear the main game.

Continuity never has to be difficult in sports betting. This all comes back to the odds screen. Everyone anywhere in the sports book ALWAYS knows what the odds are, when new prices (in-play/half) become available and exactly where to make the bet. Announcements reenforce this.

At this point there are likely questions about service. Service is ABSOLUTELY important, BUT if you nail the other three aspects, then phenomenal service becomes a bi-product of speed, isolation and continuity (with attitude of the worker mixed in, which stems from the culture).

Westgate follow the land based model which has been PERFECTED by Las Vegas over the past few decades. Rotation numbers, game sheets, odds screens are all prepared and widely available for bettors. The work is done to prep the bettors and the tellers just execute the comamnd.

What I am getting at is everything within all of the great sports books in Las Vegas follows the land based model which is tailored to speed, isolation and continuity. The focus is put to prep the customers and in turn training staff becomes easy and the experience is seamless.

How FanDuel in the Meadowlands (a billion dollar company) botched ALL OF THIS up is beyond me.

First of all, the floor plan layout is reminiscent of a strip club. The place has three different levels from the "stage" at the back which is velvet roped off as VIP to the...

restaurant which is broken up with a divider that has an eight foot gap between roof and ceiling but only two entrances at the back and front is bizarre. Because ownership decided to jam in TV's anywhere that they would fit in a circular room, sightlines could not be worse.

If you are in the "restaurant" which has 2x2 seating, you're either staring up the nostrils of the person in front of you, or crowding around one side of the table. You're also blocked off from the main screens which have the feature games upfront. If you are in the "VIP" area...

not only can everyone see you and in turn judge you for sitting there because it is open and in the middle of everything and the teller is ELEVATED so all see you being paid, but you can't see the main screens because the seats point the opposite direction of the TV's.

If you are sitting at the bar upfront in order to have your eyes on televisions, you must turn your back to all of the oddsscrens in the place. If you are following a game in play, it is idiotic to expect your customer to move from his chair and turn around every commercial.

Back to probably the thing that irked me the most. Unless you are inline at the teller, you can not see the odds screens! The bloody place has four 42" televisions with screenshots of their app projected on. The font is illegible from 90% of the room. How can people bet if...

they do not know the odds? Everyone in the "restaurant" must lean over the bar to try get a glimpse. Forget about it in VIP. To make things even worse, the place does not have sound! I have never been to a sports book that does not have sound and it is baffling. You can hear...

every discussion, thought, angry comment about the game from everyone around you, but not one peep of the game everyone is betting on. Bettors are encouraged to use kiosks, which are at the very back of the room, but are spaced less than 3 inches apart and sunk below eye level.

Directly above them (about 3 feet behind) is an elevated VIP area. If you are using the kiosk, you are not only using it where the person next to you can see exactly what you are spending, but also the biggest spenders behind you seeing it too. Some may say it does not matter...

but a good way to not convert and retain new customers is to have them intimidated by the stakes before even placing a bet. At the end of the day, what this billion dollar company has created is a poorly designed sportsbar/restaurant with the ability to bet on sports.

There is no speed, there is no isolation and there is no continuity. People do not know what they are betting on, they do not know what the odds are, everyone is looking in a different direction, there is no sound and there is everything but an ease of process to bet (CONT...)

What this has become is essentially a "web shop". I worked for two different companies in The Bahamas who utilized physical locations as deposit/payment hubs for customers to fund their accounts and utilize their online sports books. These web shops were low overhead shops...

with minimal staff, but had basic food, booze and the ability to bet on cash or through account if required. At least the places in The Bahamas got the speed, isolation and continuity part right - though. Everything was focused on the deposit and experience. We are talking...

2,000 square foot rooms where you could get money in your account, sit at a screen and watch any game with any drink within seconds. Everything worked, and the benefit was everything that occurred outside of the location. FanDuel (and likely other spots) are NOT creating...

land based sports books which is what I think is the perception for many in the US based off of Las Vegas. They are creating web shops. The biggest issue is, their web based product is even worse and they do not push that either. In my eight hours there, I did not get one...

offer from any staff person to sign up, deposit, make an account or play online. No one even mentioned it - at all. I could go on for days on the limits, betting options available, markets that were cut off, pricing that makes everything a pain to deal with not from a bettor...

perspective, but a staff perspective too (why on earth are they paying out in coins for every single wager or dealing with coins to begin with!?) but that is for another day. I guess my overall take away was utter disappointment. In my mind I had expectations of Las Vegas...

but in the end I was sitting in a much shitter and expensive failed attempt to replicate the business model that works so well in The Bahamas. The silver lining for folks in the area is that betting is legal and people can wager real money and get paid (more often) than before.

There is no way that things can ever get worse either. It is just a shame that Las Vegas has perfected land based betting and there was not one iota of effort by this billion dollar company to follow it. The lack of execution, is actually pretty embarrassing. Rant over.