Name badges were especially important at this year’s Global Gaming Expo, as all attendees were required to don masks before entering the show at the Venetian last week.
Despite the masks and a vaccine mandate that applied to all guests, employees, vendors and media, the show reflected a general mood of optimism for the industry’s recovery.
Organized by the American Gaming Association (AGA), in partnership with Reed Exhibitions (RX), G2E brought the industry together for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which crippled many operations last year, and also led to stunning innovations to support the recovery and expand the business in years to come.
“The industry has never been more united,” AGA President and CEO Bill Miller said, kicking off the event Monday. We’ve never been more determined or, really, better positioned for success. Gaming has never been more popular with the public.”
The AGA’s first Gaming CEO Outlook, released the same day, showed that 71 percent of industry leaders anticipate increases in new hiring, 63 percent see wage growth, and 39 percent expect new capital investment. Almost half of CEOs surveyed expect improving business conditions in 2022. Three-quarters of gaming suppliers expect sales of replacement units to increase and 63 percent expect higher sales of new units.
The news wasn’t all upbeat, and the report also acknowledged short-term obstacles, including supply-chain bottlenecks, labor shortages, ongoing health concerns and reduced demand for live meetings and events. To keep tabs on the recovery, the AGA plans to conduct the CEO Outlook surveys every six months.
Many participants were happy to be at a live show, able to talk to customers and colleagues face to face.
“Ten times better in person,” said Dino DeGregorio, exhibitioner and partner of Shark Trap Gaming, speaking to Fox 5-TV in Las Vegas. “Video, online or a Zoom call, it doesn’t have the same effect. It just doesn’t.”
“It’s time to move on with business,” said Chris Strano, COO of Electronic Gaming at Arrow International.
“It’s very exciting. Gambling’s back.” Strano added that customers have to see, feel and “have their hands” on products in order to make investment decisions.
Attendance was lower than in typical years, and international guests were in short supply. Among those who attended was Byul Kim, representative of the Kangwon Land casino resort in South Korea.
“We tried to persuade our company and nation to get approval to attend this show this time,” Kim said. “It’s hard to travel these days… But I hope it will get easier next year.”
Attorney Tamara Malvin told CDC Gaming Reports that live events are “a piece we were really missing. Having webinars and online opportunities during the pandemic was really important and can’t be understated. But figuring out a way for all of us to be in the room together now and in a way that feels safe … there’s nothing better than meeting people in person.”
John Connelly, CEO of Interblock Gaming, told GamingAmerica he was “happily surprised at the number of attendees, and the quality of the attendees. I thought the quality was significantly higher than in years past. I believe casino operators and suppliers alike were very calculated on who they sent to G2E this year. The level of executives attending was tremendously higher than I have seen before.”
Dave Kubajak, sales executive for JCM Global, said his company’s booth “was flooded” on Tuesday by people curious to see its new robotic count room technology.
“Having a new and novel product helped, but we had strong attendance that beat expectations all day Tuesday and Wednesday as well,” Kubajak said. “Not only were there lots of customers, there were more C-level executive management attendees than in a long time. All of the gaming execs were here, they were wanting the technology to help them solve the problems they face, and they were in the mood to buy.”
Caitlin Harte, director of product marketing for Incredible Technologies, echoed those sentiments, saying, “We had a lot of foot traffic, quality meetings and tons of interest in our new products. There was a buzz around our booth and really around the whole show. Everything was very smooth, and we had a successful selling show.”
AGS Vice President of Marketing Laura Olson-Reyes said her company’s booth was “consistently busy” throughout the show.
“We were able to meet with many of our customers from across the U.S., and even some from Mexico,” she said. “The show was energetic, and people were really happy to see each other.”
Jon Hanlin of Aristocrat Technologies said G2E was the place to display “all the hard work our game engineers put in over the past one-and-a-half years.”
“The show went really well for us,” Hanlin said. “It was great to be back with our casino partners. It showed the industry is back, the players are back, and it was great to get back to normalcy.”
The subject of the moment is the rapid-fire growth of legal sports betting in the U.S. With that growth comes increased responsibility, Miller reminded attendees. “Scrutiny from state regulators and the media is increasing around advertising saturation and aggressive promotions. And we have to get this right. Because we’ve seen what happens when it goes wrong”—a reference to crackdowns and outright bans on advertising in Europe.
At a roundtable discussion, “Looking at the Crystal Ball: The Gaming Industry’s Path Forward,” VICI Properties President John Payne said mobile sports betting customers will support visitation to bricks-and-mortar properties.
“You can only imagine that when they start visiting the assets, the profitability will continue to go up,” he said.
Among the speakers at G2E was U.S. Representative Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat, who said Las Vegas is bouncing back from Covid just as it did after September 11, the Great Recession, and the October 2017, shooting at Mandalay Bay.
“Whenever the economy is hit, Las Vegas is hit harder and it takes us longer to recover, because we’re so dependent on income in other parts of the country for people to come,” Titus said.
She discussed her support for a repeal of the federal excise tax on sports betting handle and an increase in the tax-reporting threshold for slot winnings (it’s now $1,200, a figure set in the 1970s).
“It puts a burden on the industry and the player,” Titus said. “We want to get that raised. We thought about doing it through legislation, but we’re also going the regulation route.”
She did not address the Biden administration’s proposal to scrutinize bank accounts and transactions as low as $600.
Other topics of interest were the pivot to iGaming, ongoing concerns about mobile sports betting among tribal operators, and the emergence of a new customer pool, many of whom discovered in lockdown that gambling can be fun.
Customers who started online could provide a pool of longtime, loyal, in-person patrons, said Zachary Levine, vice president of table games strategy at MGM Resorts, in a panel discussion. Levine said enthusiasm for roulette among younger players has led MGM to add more wheels at certain properties.
“You had a customer base where a lot of 20-somethings’ trips into town consisted of dinner, a show and a nightclub, and there might have been no gaming activity at all,” he said. “For the bulk of 2020, there was no show and no nightclub. So we as the casino were the entertainment. That customer is here to stay.”
