Casinos, petrified that millennials aren’t taking to traditional methods of gambling, are bringing live entertainment to the gambling floors to keep younger customers interested.

A New England casino is emptying the space once filled with typical slot machines and, instead, offering tattoo studios, MMA competitions and other futuristic gambling entertainment.  

According to a group of casinos in the USA, who are breaking the boundaries for what we can expect to see on the gambling floors, the same games are not attracting young people in the same way they did with the generation above. According to industry statistics, the gambling industry has long been angling its gaming floors toward more social skills games, which are favored by younger gamblers. Slots machines, targeted at women in their 50s and 60s, appear to have long been on their way out.

So, by now, the word is out: skill casino games attract millennials and slot machines attract older, less glamourous (and subsequently less desirable) clientele.

The Connecticut region is currently embroiled in a casino war that has seen one gambling room climb to new highs in attempting to attract new customers. Foxwoods – recently fashionably dubbed The Fox – was refurbished at the start of this year to feature a bar with a stage where its hosts often cover pop songs at various points on select evenings.

Not wishing to obey any particular casino stereotypes, they’ve recently booked huge electro-dance production artists and DJs like Tiesto and DeadMau5. At the back end of last year, a modern tattoo-studio and fashion store.

CEO of the 30-year-old resort, Felix Rapport has dubbed the refurbishment a complete success. He said: “It’s kind of like the party place. It’s really energized the casino floor.”

This trend for reworking the ratios of slot machines to live games and dynamic attractions has seen a huge increase in traction over the last two years. In December the Twin River Casino in Rhode Island uninstalled 274 slot machines to make room for more live poker and card tables, which they say brings in a younger crowd.

Steven Norton, a gambling consultant in the area warned casinos against neglecting other target audiences when attempting to drive in more millennials. He said: “You want to develop good customers now so that we don’t become the horse racing industry of the future, where all of our people have died off and we don’t have any new blood coming in.”

In recent years, casinos have tried to market slot machines toward a younger audience by advertising them with pop culture icons, such as characters from Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Deal or No Deal.

Elsewhere in Maryland and Pennsylvania, Casinos are experimenting with technology for video games like blackjack and poker that require a live dealer.

More than 70 per cent of casino revenue in the USA comes from slot machines, peaking in certain states at close to 90 per cent. Generally, slot machines have larger house edges than all table games but remain a popular stalwart in most casinos across the globe.