The gambling industry has started to figure out how its going to use this current moment to adapt and improve long term, and a lot of that involves new technology and new ways of thinking. The perfect man to talk to then is Earle G. Hall, CEO of AXES.ai and chair of the GSA blockchain group, as he can pull from a deep knowledge of technology and human behavior and help us through it. He joined our Becky Liggero Fontana for the latest episode of The Long Con.

Liggero Fontana began by asking how Hall has adapted to a more sedentary life, having months of rest from his usual busy travel schedule. “I’m really worried about my first plane ride to see how my body’s going to react, my morale is going to act,” he responded. “But more than that there’s something that I’m researching right now and it’s the amount of chemicals they’re putting in the plane. I’m sure after a couple plane rides it’s like everything else, I’ll be back in the air I’ll have about a hundred thousand miles left to do between now and Christmas, no big deal, back to the races. But for all of us that are road warriors, our lungs are already pretty dried out and roughed up from all the miles we’re doing in the hotel rooms, and the chemicals on the carpets and stuff. So from what I’m seeing about the way they’re disinfecting the airplanes, I’m stressed about that one and I’m going to monitoring it very closely from airline to airline.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIiM-j8NadQ?feature=oembed]

But before we can get back to the conference circuit, the gambling industry has to secure its future. Hall gave a peak of what that might look like. “I think before everybody’s revenue comes back to somewhere near normal, we’re going to be in a hybrid world where we’re going to be using virtual a lot more than in-person,” he said. “And it’s not going to be because of social distancing, because I think that’s just a load of crap… but I think we’re going to be in a hybrid world that’s going to be generated by economics. Everybody’s anxious to get open, everybody’s anxious to get moving, but at the end of the day companies can’t go bankrupt because of travel allowances. So I think everybody’s going to be very careful until we get back into some level of normality, and right now normality is going to be governed by social distancing. We have jurisdictions that need to have two empty slot machines between one player; so either you’re going to be playing a hundred slot machines in the warehouse, or you’re going to have less than 50% of your casino floor being in an operation. And if you do the math on that I don’t know how people are going to be profitable on low volume and low play.”