Case Study
Setting New Standards in Casino Surveillance
Why Synergy is the system of choice for Canadian properties, Fallsview Casino and Casino Niagara.
Fallsview Casino Resort is one of the largest and one of the most luxurious gaming resorts in Canada. Its sister site, Casino Niagara, is an equally important asset for the region’s booming leisure and hospitality industry.
Offering over 4,700 slot machines and 160 gaming tables for guests to choose from, the two sites don’t just share a parent operating company – Mohegan – they also share surveillance footage, which is monitored and managed with the same solution, Synergy.
A clear focus on making casino surveillance simpler
Work to replace legacy surveillance solutions at both sites was completed in September 2024, with Synectics initially implementing its Synergy software in Fallsview Casino and, more recently, Casino Niagara.
While both systems are independent, video surveillance from either location can be accessed from each facility’s control room.
Mike Stanciu, Director of Surveillance for both facilities, commented: “The ability to access multiple sites is very important for connected sites like ours. Having Synergy for both locations also makes consistency and training much easier. But while these benefits are important, they are perhaps secondary to the real reason we chose Synergy: it makes daily life so much simpler for our Surveillance Investigators and Technical team."
“Being able to quickly and intuitively navigate between live cameras, easily create and manage incidents, and cut footage reviews from hours down to minutes. These things matter, and Synergy’s investigator-friendly design reflects that.”
Adaptable mapping made for casinos that constantly change
It’s not just live viewing and video management that has been simplified. Synergy’s mapping capabilities are also having a big impact, by bringing multiple layers and thousands of cameras into one user friendly space.
Mike added: “When I first saw how easy it is to upload our own CAD maps to Synergy and how quickly we could adapt and switch between mapping layers, I thought it was unbelievable. I could immediately see the value of this for us."
"We are frequently improving our gaming floor layout and adapting to the new maps in Synergy. So, making mapping changes to our surveillance solution with such ease is hugely beneficial.”
Reliability that helps surveillance directors “sleep at night”
Like all gaming properties, Fallsview Casino and Casino Niagara must guard against footage loss and regulatory obligations. Failure to do so risks losing money to thefts or fraudulent play, costly property closures, and possible exposure to regulatory penalties.
To avoid such scenarios, Synectics has implemented redundancy and resiliency measures. For example, should the primary Synergy server fail at either site, the entire software application is replicated onto a backup server for uninterrupted control – with everything failing back once the issue is resolved.
‘Hot swap’ recording failover adds another layer of protection, ensuring that recording automatically re-routes to an alternative device should the usual storage unit or device fail.
“There’s a big difference between having measures to protect against coverage loss and knowing that those measures will work. As a Casino Surveillance Director, you’ll only be able to sleep at night if you have the latter.”
As a preventative measure, Mike and his team also use Synergy’s system health dashboards, which provide real-time data on server and storage equipment status. This ensures that any warning indicators can be quickly addressed before problems occur.
A future open to a raft of useful integrations
Synergy’s open architecture ensures that once implemented, users can easily integrate with other technologies and systems in accordance with evolving needs, budgets, and business priorities.
This was another important factor in switching both sites to Synergy for Fallsview Casino and Casino Niagara.
Mike concluded: “We will continue to evaluate integration with other systems in the facility and use those opportunities to build out a resilient and holistic interconnected ecosystem.
“The rise of AI also presents unique opportunities for further integration, to analyse gaming data for anomalies or harness metadata for faster incident investigations."
"As a world leader in gaming, we continue to explore AI and its capabilities and while we can’t predict the future, what we do know is that with Synergy, we’ve got these opportunities.”