Gamblers Getting Wider Says Slot Chair Maker
According to a company that makes chairs for slot machines, players are expanding.
The chair manufacturer says slot machine seats have grown to reflect the greater girth of players, from a longtime standard of 12 inches to widths of 17, 19 or 21 inches. Some chairs are a whopping 28 inches across.
Even more amazing is the fact the size increases come at a time when many buffets have closed. Oh, like we weren’t going to make a buffet joke. Do you know this blog at all?
According to the CEO of Gary Platt Manufacturing, Joe Esposito, casinos are ordering wider chairs because, “They want to have people comfortable, staying longer, pushing the button one more time.”
What Esposito is describing is a key element of slot machine profitability, known in the casino industry as “time on device.” The longer someone plays, the greater the revenue generated.
Platt says today’s slot chairs are more like “thrones, fit for a king.”
This chair company would probably be more successful if it understood the demographics of slot machine gamblers. The CEO would’ve more accurately said, “fit for a queen.”
The majority of slot players are women. Which makes it even more awkward to talk about how slot players are getting bigger, as any man who has ever been in a relationship and ended up sleeping on the couch knows.
The growing width of slot machine chairs is, of course, a reflection of the growing problem of obesity in America.
Nearly 60% of all American citizens are overweight or obese. Obesity rates have more than doubled since 1980.
A story in the Reno Gazette Journal also touches upon the fact chair preferences vary by geography. (Thanks to our friend and former Las Vegas Review-Journal writer, Corey Levitan here at Casino.org, for bringing this story to our attention.)
Australian gamblers, known to gamble more than anyone in the world, prefer rounder chairs. The CEO of Gary Platt Manufacturing says Aussies like “a more encompassing, hugging feeling.”
In Europe, gamblers tend to like “teeny, tiny chairs.”
In the story, the chair manufacturer also touches upon how durable slot machine chairs have to be. “People really beat the crap out of chairs at casinos,” Esposito said.
What the CEO didn’t mention was some of the other qualities a slot machine chair must have: They have to be resistant to liquid. That’s not only because people sometimes spill their drinks on the chairs. It’s because guests often urinate on them, too enthralled with playing to get up and hit the restroom.
Here are more things you don’t want to know about Las Vegas casinos.
Slot machine chairs are everywhere now, but at one time, players stood to play. Read more about how, when and where players started to sit.
In Las Vegas, it’s believed the first slot machine chairs appeared at the Birdcage Casino in 1956. The Birdcage was located where Binion’s now stands.
In a way, the advent of sitting to play slot machines echoes the changes in our culture that have contributed to so many people being overweight.
Declining rates of activity aren’t helping. Thanks a lot, industrialization! There’s a lot of blame to be placed on fast food, sugar-sweetened drinks and larger portion sizes, of course.
In still more awkwardness, historians point to women’s empowerment, leading to more women working, which has resulted in less time to prepare healthy meals for their families (as they had prior to the 1970s), contributing to the rise in obesity. Please send all hate mail to bivariate regression coefficients, whatever those might be. It would be a lot less awkward to just say “Industrialization and McDonald’s!” and leave it at that. We are, as you might know, a big shyer away from awkward.
How did a simple story about widening slot machine chairs turn into what is sure to be a certified kerfuffle? Answer: Everything now turns into a kerfuffle.
The point is it’s funny our chairs are getting wider and we are personally cowering under one currently, so there’s that.
Also, stop leaning chairs against your slot machine to save them. It’s dumb and annoying. Let the kerfuffle begin!
Leave your thoughts on “Gamblers Getting Wider Says Slot Chair Maker”
4 Comments