Steve Arntzen has an enviable position. As chief operating officer of Las Vegas-based United Coin Machine Company, Arntzen directs the financial future of Nevada’s top slot route operator. The company provides more than 6,500 gaming machines to more than 600 locations throughout the state, including well-known bars, restaurants, grocery stores and convenience stores, and has cultivated a loyal customer base since its beginning in 1957.

Like many other companies in the country, United Coin has had to adjust its long-term goals and business strategies in light of the economic downturn. Arntzen and his colleagues recently unveiled a new promotion, Cash Call, which will be running throughout the summer for the company’s slot club members.

Arntzen recently spoke with Casino Connection Assistant Editor Caitlin McGarry about the promotion, the recession and how United Coin has kept customers happy for 52 years. To hear a podcast of the interview, visit www.ggbmagazine.com and click on the GGB Podcast button.

Casino Connection: You compete against casinos, which have all the amenities any player could want. Why do they play at your locations?

Arntzen: The main thing is location and convenience. Usually they’re close to neighborhoods, and people feel like they belong to these locations when they come in. They get to know the people there; they get to know the owners, the bartenders. They’re regulars.It’s difficult to do that in a casino environment, where you’re competing with thousands of tourists every day. As much as casinos strive for good service, it’s impossible to treat them like you can if you really know the person.

You offer a slot club called Gamblers Bonus. How does that work and what advantages does it provide for players at your machines?

Gamblers Bonus is our biggest tool that we have in our company. It is our brand, really. Customers at any location, whether it’s a bar, a convenience store, a grocery store or a small casino that we have it in, they all can recognize the symbol and they identify with it. They log in with their Gamblers Bonus number right on the device. Their points move with them at any location, so that as they earn points, those points are available anywhere they go in Nevada that’s hooked up to Gamblers Bonus.

Can you describe Cash Call, the new summer promotion you have running?

How Cash Call works is every Gamblers Bonus customer can call from their cell phone, as long as it’s a text-enabled cell phone. They make an initial call and they go through a short sign-up process where they put in their Gamblers Bonus number and their Gamblers Bonus number along with their phone number tied together.

Then starting June 30, we will send every customer that opts into the program a text message and tell them what their prize will be that day. If they come into any Gamblers Bonus location and log into the machine, their prize will be downloaded instantly on their account.

How often does United Coin replace the gaming machines at affiliated locations?

Because of the unique characteristics of having a strong, almost 100 percent local clientele, the demand for new games isn’t nearly what it is at a casino, where they constantly are getting players from around the world coming in and expecting to see the latest—“I’m coming to Vegas, I expect to see the newest, the latest, the flashiest game.”

Our customers are actually very slow to move toward new games, but we move technologies and in anything that’s technological and transparent, we’re way at the forefront. Our games, we try to continue to make them feel they’re comfortable with them and they’re kind of like their old friends. A lot of times we will freshen up a game or we’ll take a CRT monitor out. We’ll put an LCD monitor in and we’ll put LED buttons in where they used to have light bulbs. So we’ll move the game along so that it’s basically a new game. We’ll put a new lid on it. It continues to look like a new game, but it still has the features and the screen and the graphics that a customer says, “That’s my old friend, and I want to stick with it.”

There are several other slot route operators in Nevada. Why would a location choose your company over some of the others?

We don’t own any other properties at all. All we are is a slot route operator. We don’t own any bars. We don’t own any convenience stores. We own none of the entities that are our customer. That’s where our competitors are really different.

And why did you decide to stay strictly a slot route?

We thought that if we even take one step that direction, we changed 52 years of business history that we’ve developed. We have a lot of long-term relationships with customers. We have customers that have been with us for 30 years. It would just be going a direction I don’t think they ever signed up for.

How has the economic downturn affected United Coin?
Smoking and the economy hit us because of course the bars and convenience stores and grocery stores all went non-smoking the same time we found out in the news that our economy was going down the tank. It took us a year or two just to sort out what we were getting hit from, smoking or the economy, but we knew we were dropping.

From a company perspective, we have probably gone through the same financial turmoil that most every gaming company in town has. The advantage that we have is that we have two private lenders. The two of them together have discussed things with us and said, “We always looked at this as long-term investment. This is a macro problem, it’s not a micro problem. We feel your company is being managed properly, that your businesses are operating properly. We’re just going to make the concessions necessary and adjust things as times change.”

What are your goals for the future of this company?

We know that anybody can buy the same machine that we buy. What they really can’t do is they can’t match as far as being able to take 70,000 people across the state in one big group and say, “Anywhere you go in here, you’re going to be able to log in and any of the promotions that we run statewide are available to you.” We just need to keep working that. Because that’s what really makes United Coin unique. It’s why this company has lasted 52 years and it will last 52 more if we focus on what we have that others don’t.

By Caitlin McGarry