Foxwoods SVP of Gaming Ops Bryan Hayes Talks Innovation, Diversification in a Crowded Resort Field

Square-footage-wise, Foxwoods Resort Casino, in Uncasville, Connecticut, is the largest resort casino in North America. It's also one of the oldest in the Northeast, having opened as a bingo hall in 1986 and as a full casino in 1992. 

Bryan Hayes began working at the 9 million square-foot resort in 2005 and has served as senior vice president of gaming operations since 2020. 

Casinos.com had the chance to sit down with Hayes during the casino property's 33rd anniversary to talk about how Foxwoods has adapted to the increasing competition in the gaming industry over the past three decades and what helps a resort stand apart from other gaming options.

Casinos: Can you speak about how Foxwoods competes for customers?

Hayes: When Foxwoods first opened, it was us and Atlantic City. Then Mohegan Sun opened, and from there the expansion of gaming has grown pretty consistently grown ever since. So we have had to reinvent ourselves from a gaming perspective because gaming is the only thing that is offered at every single one of these properties.

So we have certainly looked at everything that we have here, and have tried to leverage the fact that we are one of the biggest, most diverse properties across the country. We have gaming areas that appeal to all guests who come to the property, and not everybody can do that.

We have an absolutely beautiful Woodlands Casino that we just built. It’s approximately 60,000 square feet. We have a 130+ slot machine high limit room that we added to that area. We added another 330 games to that floor. So that’s a brand new area that used to be a convention space. We converted that to a casino and a gaming area because we saw that we had a need to really push on the amenities that we were offering from a gaming perspective, and we really wanted to centralize a lot of our gaming to the core area of our property.

So we intentionally built out a high-limit room that we knew would have a much broader appeal across not just the region but the country as a whole. From there, we transitioned into the Grand Pequot and we’re currently in the midst of a pretty heavy remodel there as well. Our Club Newport Casino, which is our high-limit table games casino, also went through a full remodel over the last year.

The room has approximately 35 table games in it, everything from blackjack to baccarat to craps to roulette. We gutted it, stripped it down to absolutely nothing, and built out the new room that we’ve got today with two salons. One salon hosts four tables in it, while the other one has one table in it, and it can accommodate larger games such as a large baccarat table.

Where does Foxwoods see itself positioned compared to its regional competition, both today and looking toward the future?

We have the newest, best product that’s out on the market. We’ve got some phenomenal partners that allow us to put games on our floors before some of our other competitors—not just our immediate competitors, but we’re sometimes one of the first casinos to have it in the country with some of our closest partners.

The competitive landscape has certainly changed, and we’ve been able to compete because we are essentially five casino floors with a wide variety of amenities and a very strong mix of gaming positions on the floor.

In addition to the reimagining of many gaming spaces across the property, we also have many other amenities that help us compete. We can compete very well from a gaming perspective because we have offerings that you just aren’t going to find at many other properties that we compete against regionally speaking.

But we also have all of our hotel rooms; we’ve got 30+ restaurants. We have a brand-new Great Wolf Lodge that will open this year as well to drive additional guests to the region and to Mashantucket. The combination of all those items with our ability to be able to offer all of the best and newest products in the market helps us compete extremely well not just in the northeast, but nationally as well.

From a gaming perspective, Foxwoods made a name for itself through bingo -- which has been here since before the property became a full casino -- and poker, as it has one of the largest poker rooms on the East Coast. Are bingo and poker still key drivers for Foxwoods?

Absolutely. You have to drive pretty far to get to the next closest bingo hall. It’s still a very significant driver for us in terms of gaming and guests that also come to the property and do other things besides play bingo.

It’s the same thing with poker. There is a lot more competition from a poker perspective. Looking at the other properties that offer poker, in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York, it’s almost everywhere surrounding us, unlike bingo.

That said, poker is still a very strong driver for us, and that's why we wanted to shift it to an area like Fox Tower with many more amenities and offerings for those guests. We’re looking at poker as an anchor for Fox Tower that will not only drive those guests but also offer the laundry list of amenities that exist on the Fox Tower side for our poker guests.

We’ve got an 800-room hotel attached to the Fox Tower. We have many food and beverage outlets and other amenities for those guests. We’ve got a full cage over there. So we think it will be a win-win across the board for us and how we want to position the Fox Tower and for our guests.

Diversification beyond gaming revenue has become a big deal in other markets, particularly in Las Vegas. Do you see that diversification as part of Foxwoods’ ongoing strategy?

Absolutely. We certainly look at ourselves as a regional destination, but we are a resort destination, and all of the amenities that we’ve highlighted are what we believe make us that true resort destination. The diversification of those amenities will certainly matter going into the future, because, as I mentioned, the one common denominator here is gaming, and almost every property has gaming. Maybe not all of the same things that we have, but they all have gaming.

Do I think we’ll get to that Vegas level? I don’t know if we’ll get to that level, but I do think that nongaming will make up more of our revenue as time goes on. Do I think it’ll be closer to 60/40 in favor of gaming, or even closer to 50/50? I don’t know, but I do see that transition happening.

We just announced The Bedford by Martha Stewart opening. We have golf courses; we’ve got zip lines. All of these things drive guests to the property, and they are certainly independent drivers of guests, so I do think that ratio will continue to shift as time goes on, though I do believe it will always be predominantly gaming.

Lastly, what do you see the Foxwoods brand as right now, and what would you like that brand to be moving forward?

From a branding perspective, everybody knows Foxwoods as a casino, right? It was always Foxwoods Resort Casino with a much stronger emphasis on the casino, looking back historically.

With the evolution of the brand, I think “This is How We Resort” is perfect. Because all of what we’ve been talking about is that destination resort experience and letting our guests know about all the other things we have to offer and all the other things that are coming.

It’s a very exciting time for all of us, but we want to put a little more of an emphasis on the resort aspect. That’s key, because everybody knows we’re a casino. That’s how we started—we started as a bingo hall many, many years ago.

So many things have changed over the course of the last couple of years. It really is the perfect time to shine a light on the total resort, all the things that are now here, and all the things that have changed and will continue to change going into the future.