Detroit's Downtown Casino Slashes Radio Costs and Gains Unprecedented Visibility

Hollywood Casino at Greektown sits in the heart of downtown Detroit, featuring roughly 100,000 square feet of gaming space, a 400-room hotel, and approximately a thousand employees spanning security, slot operations, valet, housekeeping, food and beverage, environmental services, the cage, and table games.

Brad Mitchell, Director of IT, has spent nearly two decades in the gaming industry. When he arrived at the property, he inherited 200 to 300 legacy radios that had been accumulating problems across 25 years and multiple ownership changes. Many were broken. Batteries rarely lasted a full shift. And vast sections of the gaming floor were dead zones where radios simply didn’t work.

Then the infrastructure itself started failing. “One of the power supplies on the main head-end unit had died, and to replace that power supply was tens of thousands of dollars,” Mitchell recalls. “On top of that, the controllers were end of life.” The quote to upgrade just the controllers came in at around $80,000, and that wouldn’t even address the aging repeaters on the floor.

“I had to evaluate how much money and time do I want to continue to invest on keeping our legacy controllers alive, or do I look at other innovative solutions.” — Brad Mitchell, Director of IT

The Daily Struggle on the Floor

The pain wasn’t just financial. Oscar Sturges, Valet and Transportation Manager with 17 years at the property, remembers the battery scramble: “Most of them didn’t even last a whole eight hours. We would have to snatch off that battery, throw on another battery.” The old batteries took six to eight hours to recharge. “We ran into that for years.”

For security, the stakes were higher. Eboni Glenn, Assistant Shift Manager of Security, describes areas where officers couldn’t reach anyone. “Our old radios didn’t have good connection in certain areas of the casino. We may be in situations where we couldn’t contact Eagle One,” the property’s surveillance team.

Mario Crippen, Assistant Slot Operations Manager, felt it on the guest side. “With the old legacy radio, my message might not even have been delivered because of roadblocks or dead spots inside the casino.”

From 20-Device Demo to Property-Wide Rollout

Mitchell started small, purchasing 20 Relay devices for a 30-day trial with the valet team, a department that had never even had radios before. The results were immediate. The property quickly expanded to approximately 200 devices and app licenses across virtually every department.

What sealed the decision was Relay’s flexibility. Physical devices for frontline staff, while supervisors can use the Relay app on a phone they already have, getting the same channels and features without a second device. That also meant departments that never had radios before could be connected for the first time without additional hardware costs. “Why would you want to put that team member through having another device on them?” Mitchell says. “Being able to put all of those services on one device, they were able to be a lot more efficient.”

Seamless Coverage, Crystal-Clear Audio

Because Relay connects over both Wi-Fi and LTE, team members now have reliable coverage from the back of house and the gaming floor to the hotel and outside the building.

For valet, whose work takes them to the airport 30 minutes away, this has been transformational. Sturges shares one unforgettable story: while driving a celebrity back from a nearby venue, he noticed three cars tailing them. Using his Relay, he made a direct call to the team member at the gate. “I’m coming in hot. Three cars following me. As soon as I pull in, shut the gate.” Within moments, they were safely inside. “Having the Relay radio made that difference.”

On the loud casino floor, audio clarity has been equally impactful. Crippen was shocked the first time he used his device. “I pushed the button and said something. I thought nobody heard me, but they did a radio check and it came through loud and clear.” Kent Warren, a seven-year slot attendant, agrees: “The old ones were garbled and crackly. The clarity is much improved.”

Battery Life, Durability, and No More Lost Radios

Glenn reports that officers now rarely return with dead devices. “These last all day. I rarely get officers come back and say their radios have died.” Sturges puts a number on it: “We have been able to easily get two whole shifts out of one use, and it only takes two hours to charge.”

The compact form factor solved another chronic problem. Legacy radios frequently got left in guest vehicles because they were bulky. With Relay, valet drivers keep devices in their breast pockets and can hear communications hands-free while driving. And when a device does go missing, location tracking pinpoints exactly where it is. “To date, we have not lost any radios,” Sturges reports.

The demand speaks for itself: “We don’t have enough radios, so we have people that come to work early to make sure that they get a Relay radio. “Because if not, they’ve got to carry one of the old legacy radios. We call them ‘the block.’ And no one wants to carry a block.”

Visibility That Legacy Radios Could Never Offer

For Mitchell, the cloud-based dashboard has been a game-changer. Every voice communication is automatically transcribed and retained for seven days. Leadership can review exactly what was said, by whom, and when.

“During an active investigation, having all of your data at your fingertips is key,” Mitchell says. “You can click on an actual transcribed message and hear it in real time.”

Glenn uses the dashboard regularly for incident review and officer tracking. “We can go back if we have a situation and we need to see exactly what was said and exactly what time. Our other radios didn’t have that.”

The property also benefits from cross-department channel switching. When Detroit Police Department officers work overtime shifts at the casino, they’re issued Relay radios. If an officer steps off the premises, security can reach them instantly. “It’s better than using our phones to call them,” Glenn says. “They’ll come and respond right away.”

“Moving to a product like Relay is a no-brainer. Being able to be more efficient, utilize new technology, while lowering your footprint, is a no-brainer.” — Brad Mitchell, Director of IT

Crippen puts it even more simply: “If you are not using this radio, you are stuck in the past.”