MGM Mirage, IGT $85,000,000 Plan to Install New Slots

MGM Mirage, IGT $85,000,000 Plan to Install New Slots

MGM Mirage and Nevada slot machine builder International Game Technology have reached an $85 million deal to convert 11 casinos to IGT's EZ Pay coinless slot system. MGM Mirage plans to buy 7,000 new slot machines and retrofit 11,000 more devices with the EZ Pay ticket-reading hardware at 11 of its 12 properties.

Installation of the "ticket-in, ticket-out" system was expected to be completed by summer. "Customers' acceptance of the ticket payout systems during field trials has been exceptional," Bobby Baldwin, president and chief executive officer of Las Vegas-based MGM Mirage subsidiary Mirage Resorts, said in a statement.

"The whole notion of a person carrying around coins playing nickels and converting to playing quarters was unwieldy," MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said Monday. "With a ticket, they can just turn to the next machine and avoid all the conversion problems."

MGM Mirage properties slated to switch to EZ Pay include the Bellagio, Mirage, MGM Grand, Treasure Island, New York-New York and Golden Nugget in Las Vegas; three casinos in Primm, on Interstate 15 south of Las Vegas; plus the MGM Grand in Detroit and Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Miss. The Golden Nugget in Laughlin was not included.

Feldman said it was important to show regulators that the system was secure and tamperproof before it was installed, and said MGM Mirage expects to retrain idled coin cashiers for new jobs within the company.

Ed Rogich, vice president of Reno-based IGT, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the contract was "a huge endorsement of our system, and a great kick-start for our fiscal year," which began Oct. 1. IGT said it currently has 60,000 machines in use or on trial at 100 casinos.

New machines, before volume discounts, cost about $10,000 each. Retrofitting with ticket reader-printers and new software costs up to a couple of thousand dollars per device. Officials said the costs are made up by reduced coin handling expenses, additional revenue earned by machines that stay in service longer and increased customer satisfaction because delays are eliminated.

About 68 percent of the 600,000 slots on U.S. casino floors are IGT machines, Rogich said. Some operators let slot machines still accept coins, while others elect to go 100 percent to paper. Rogich predicted MGM Mirage's Strip properties would retain the ability to use coins.

"In the (Las Vegas) Strip environment I think you'll always see coin," he said. Other operators have converted a big percentage of their slot floors to ticket-in, ticket-out devices, including the Station Casinos and Coast Casinos Las Vegas locals' properties and the 11-month-old Palms, Rogich said.

Las Vegas-based Park Place Entertainment last year reached a deal to convert seven casinos to coinless systems in an agreement including the purchase of about 15,000 new IGT slots over three years. Mandalay Resort Group has an EZ Pay trial under way at its Luxor hotel-casino, and Harrah's executives said recently they are working on a companywide conversion to an in-house system.

Rogich and Baldwin compared the introduction of coinless technology to the rapid installation of slot machine dollar bill validators in the early and mid-1990s.

SOURCE: The Associated Press