Acres Manufacturing Company, a leading casino loyalty and technology innovator, announced the launch of TIBO (Ticket-In Bonus-Out), a new slot ticketing solution enabled by its Foundation technology.
TIBO dispenses cashable tickets and bonuses directly to players via the slot machine’s ticket dispenser. Acres will demonstrate its new TIBO solution at the upcoming Indian Gaming Tradeshow & Convention, to be held on March 27-30, 2023, in San Diego, California. Deployments are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2023.
TIBO is one of the first true evolutions of Ticket-In Ticket-Out (“TITO”) technology, a solution that changed the industry when it debuted roughly 20 years ago and is now installed nearly universally in slot machines worldwide. The new TIBO offering from Acres takes TITO to the next level, performing core ticket issuance and redemption functions at slot machines, kiosks and cashier terminals while enhancing the player experience by delivering tangible, physical bonuses of value to the player. Players appreciate and value the power and excitement of a printed ticket and TIBO makes it easier for casino operators to bring bonuses to players’ hands.
TIBO works on any slot machine, including those connected to casino management systems (“CMS”) from Aristocrat, IGT, Konami and Light & Wonder, allowing casino operators to immediately deploy TIBO on their casino floors. While the legacy CMS continues to account for play and loyalty data, the combination of TIBO and Foundation takes over ticketing responsibilities to deliver exciting new bonus opportunities, which can be triggered by Foundation’s real-time data stream.
This new solution from Acres follows on the current success of Acres’ Cashless Casino deployments which have now reached 31,000 games in 9 states. Over time, casinos will be able to migrate all CMS functionality to Foundation – including loyalty, bonusing, cashless, reporting and analytics – and remove the legacy CMS without disruption, resulting in meaningful annual hardware and maintenance savings that flow immediately to the bottom line.
“We are continuously looking for ways to innovate to bring new technology to casino floors. In much the same way we’ve pursued the burgeoning cashless opportunity, we created TIBO because consumer tastes have changed in the 20 plus years since TITO was released,” said Noah Acres. “Modern consumers want gamified experiences triggered by real-time personal data and TIBO fulfills these desires by issuing targeted, data-driven bonuses through the slot machine’s ticket printer.”
Legacy TITO solutions cannot leverage real-time player data, can only print in response to the push of the cash out button on a slot machine and only issue tickets for the amount shown on the game’s credit meter at the time of cash out.
Acres’ new TIBO solution leverages the real-time data stream provided by Foundation and benefits from access to game commands to print a ticket of any value at any moment, including a ‘print ticket’ pop-up in the casino operator’s Cashless Casino app or even automatically if a trigger event occurs. Bonus tickets produced by TIBO and dispensed by the ticket printer can be redeemed for a multitude of value categories, including cash, free play, or merchandise.
