Global Gaming Business, February 2022

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Global Gaming Business Magazine

AGEM’S MARCUS PRATER SPORTS BETTING TECH PALMS’ CYNTHIA KISER MURPHEY 2021 BY THE NUMBERS

February 2022 • Vol. 21 • No. 2 • $10

Next Big Thing The

Cyber Crime

What you can do to prevent your casino being held for ransom

Gaming technology innovator John Acres brings a new Foundation to the casino floor

Don’t Panic Why reacting to your competitor’s marketing isn’t the best strategy

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CONTENTS

Vol. 21 • No. 2

february

Global Gaming Business Magazine

COLUMNS

26 COVER STORY The Acres Plan Acres Manufacturing, headed by the legendary John Acres and son Noah Acres, is launching technology designed to revolutionize the way casinos market to and reward their slot players, as the Foundation system collects 1,000 times the data of a traditional casino management system and provides casinos paths to maximize that data.

By Frank Legato

10 AGA By the Numbers Dave Forman

12 Fantini’s Finance Bring It On Home Frank Fantini

31 Making My Point Silver Screen Gems Roger Snow

On the Cover: John Acres, chief executive officer, and Noah Acres, chief operating officer, Acres Manufacturing.

Photo by Jimmie Butler, jimmie b photography.

FEATURES 14 Fighting Cyberattack

32 Resisting Panic Marketing

The emergence of ransomware attacks on casinos has opened a new front in the battle for cybersecurity.

Casino marketers should resist marketing efforts initiated solely as a reaction to what the competition is doing, a “panic” mode that can be counterproductive.

By Andrew Cardno

Securing the Industry Our annual World Game Protection report on security and surveillance in the gaming industry.

18 Top 20 Scams One of the industry’s top security experts, and founder of the World Game Protection conferences, identifies the top 20 scams against casinos.

By Willy Allison

22 Security After Covid As the industry was forever changed by the unprecedented Covid-19 crisis, so were the necessary protocols and procedures of casino security.

DEPARTMENTS 4

The Agenda

6

By the Numbers

8

5 Questions

13 AGEM 38 Emerging Leaders

By Julia Carcamo

With Engaged Nation’s Heather Lee Lommori, DLA Piper’s Michael Peacock, and Sportradar’s Brandt Iden

36 End of an Era

44 New Game Review

Our “Exit Interview” of Marcus Prater, who this month ends his 14-year position as executive director of the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers, an organization he transformed during his tenure.

48 Cutting Edge 49 Frankly Speaking 50 Goods & Services 53 People

By Roger Gros

54 Casino Communications

40 Sports Betting Tech The vendors who anticipated the new market of U.S. sports betting are at the top of their game as that market expands.

With Cynthia Kiser Murphey, General Manager, The Palms

By Dave Bontempo

By Alan W. Zajic FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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THE AGENDA

Playing With Fire

Vol. 21 • No. 2 • FEBRUARY 2022 Roger Gros, Publisher | rgros@ggbmagazine.com twitter: @GlobalGamingBiz Frank Legato, Editor | flegato@ggbmagazine.com twitter: @FranklySpeakn

By Roger Gros, Publisher

A

s we entered into 2022 last month, there was lots of speculation about the legalization of gambling in the few states in the U.S. that still lack it. The giddiness about sports betting in North America continued to surround the handful of states and provinces that may permit it in 2022 and how such a competitive market is developing.

For those advocating these positions, I have just three words: Stop. Just. Stop.

Because the out-of-control marketing of sports betting across the country is causing a backlash that could eviscerate the industry in many varied and serious ways.

Sports betting in the U.S. is in its infancy. The pressure to establish market share is enormous. Thus, this barrage of ads is turning off the American public, and the content of the ads is skating a fine line between fun and fantasy (and I don’t mean DFS). And let’s name names.

Caesars’ “emperor” seems to be all over the place.

Being a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I’m a big fan of JB Smoove. I like to see him stretch his acting chops.

But not every single moment while I’m watching a sports event.

DraftKings and FanDuel. Did you not learn your lessons at the dawn of the DFS movement, when your constant and repetitive ads hammered the airwaves during each and every game, match or tournament?

You woke up the devil of state attorneys general who realized that maybe there was some gambling going on that wasn’t permitted in their states. It ended up costing you multimillions of lobbying dollars to make it right again.

And while I really like the irreverence of Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy and his ability to not be canceled by the “woke” crowd—not to mention his “just one bite” pizza reviews—regulators will not be handled so deftly. One slip-up and his gambling partnership with Penn National could collapse, and the implications may go far beyond just that business.

Now some history. Back in 1994, an effort was made in Florida to legalize casinos. It was led by some of the largest companies in the gaming industry. And it failed miserably because it wasn’t viewed as a grassroots effort, but an effort to impose gambling upon a state whose citizens might have enjoyed a punt now and then but didn’t like the method that was being used. After that experience, the industry always took the position to let a grassroots movement develop

4

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

before jumping in with its support.

That position led to the expansion of gaming in many states across the country—except for Florida, ironically, which several years ago passed a measure that requires a statewide referendum for any effort to expand gaming.

And this law has led to the current fight to place a sports betting measure on the November ballot in Florida. Unlike the current lockout of the players by the owners of Major League Baseball teams, which is characterized as billionaires fighting with multi-millionaires, this one is more simple. It’s billionaires (the Seminole tribe) fighting with billionaires (Las Vegas Sands, FanDuel, DraftKings, etc.). Even with a statewide referendum, Florida voters are feeling bullied. This can’t end well. In both situations, the loser may be the common man who simply wants to watch a ballgame or make a bet.

The mess in California ballot questions is the same, where as many as four ballot questions on sports betting could confound voters in November.

Please stop and reconsider your positions.

Also, please cease and desist in your attempts to get gambling legalized in both Georgia and Texas.

Your efforts have been ham-fisted and wrong-minded in both states.

What could happen if we continue this ride on a runaway train? We’d be lucky to get away with an advertising ban similar to the ones Europe is experiencing because of the aggressive marketing of its gambling ventures.

For sports betting the danger is clear and present. The awful New York legislation, featuring a skyhigh tax rate and a limited number of competitors in the market, could make states that have already legalized sports betting sit up and take notice. “New York and Pennsylvania have a vibrant market with a high tax rate and are doing fine,” they’d say. “We’re getting cheated. Let’s raise our rate and get our fair share.”

The noted gaming attorney and academic I. Nelson Rose has written often about how backlashes in gambling occurred over the last 100 years or more. Several of them wiped out the industry as it was known at that time.

Let’s not allow that to happen again. Let’s run silent, run deep for a couple of years. Let the market settle down. Let the players get comfortable with the product and see what happens. This could be a crucial time in gaming and we need to have a plan.

Marjorie Preston, Managing Editor mpreston@ggbmagazine.com Monica Cooley, Art Director mcooley@ggbmagazine.com Terri Brady, Sales & Marketing Director tbrady@ggbmagazine.com Becky Kingman-Gros, Chief Operating Officer bkingros@ggbmagazine.com Lisa Johnson, Communications Advisor lisa@lisajohnsoncommunications.com twitter: @LisaJohnsonPR Columnists Frank Fantini | Dave Forman | Roger Snow Contributing Editors Willy Allison | Dave Bontempo twitter: @bontempomedia Julia Carcamo | Andrew Cardno Keli Elkins | Hanna McCall Bill Sokolic twitter: @downbeachfilm | Alan W. Zajic __________________

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Rino Armeni, President, Armeni Enterprises

•

Mark A. Birtha, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Hard Rock International

•

Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs, President, Lifescapes International

•

Nicholas Casiello Jr., Shareholder, Fox Rothschild

•

Jeffrey Compton, Publisher, CDC E-Reports twitter: @CDCNewswire

•

Dean Macomber, President, Macomber International, Inc.

•

Stephen Martino, Vice President & Chief Compliance Officer, MGM Resorts International, twitter: @stephenmartino

•

Jim Rafferty, President, Rafferty & Associates

•

Thomas Reilly, Vice President Systems Sales, Scientific Games

•

Michael Soll, President, The Innovation Group

•

Katherine Spilde, Executive Director, Sycuan Gaming Institute, San Diego State University, twitter: @kspilde

•

Ernie Stevens, Jr., Chairman, National Indian Gaming Association twitter: @NIGA1985

•

Roy Student, President, Applied Management Strategies

•

David D. Waddell, Partner Regulatory Management Counselors PC Casino Connection International LLC. 1000 Nevada Way • Suite 204 • Boulder City, NV 89005 702-248-1565 • 702-248-1567 (fax) www.ggbmagazine.com The views and opinions expressed by the writers and columnists of GLOBAL GAMING BUSINESS are not necessarily the views of the publisher or editor.

Copyright 2022 Global Gaming Business LLC. Boulder City, NV 89005 GLOBAL GAMING BUSINESS is published monthly by Casino Connection International, LLC. Printed in Nevada, USA. Postmaster: Send Change of Address forms to: 1000 Nevada Way, Suite 204, Boulder City, NV 89005 Official Publication

GGB

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BY THE

NUMBERS

Bit of A RolleR CoAsteR W

hile cybercurrency has been suggested as a way to expand gaming, few regulatory bodies around the world have ventured in that direction. One of the reasons they are reluctant to approve it is its volatility.

Despite being the biggest and most significant cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is still susceptible to dramatic rises proceeded by equally rapid falls. Having surged to an all-time high of more than $60,000 in April 2021, Bitcoin plunged to around the $30,000 mark at the end of July. Instability and crypto go hand in hand, though, and the Bitcoin roller coaster raced skyward again soon after, with the record-breaking price of over $67,000 hit in early November, followed by yet another trough. For the gambler, it’s about knowing when to get out. For a casino, it’s too much of a gamble.

The chart comes from “The Fact Pack,” a weekly economic report from Las Vegas-based HighTower and RCG Economics. To subscribe, visit rcgecon.com.

Core Mission

A

“core” game in slot machine parlance is a game new to the market but only on a “for sale” basis, not leased. Some months there are few new core games for any manufacturer and other months there are many, so the popularity of the games and the percentage of the market can vary widely. And of course, many of the larger companies debut many new games each month, as opposed to small companies. In the December edition of the Eilers-Fantini Central Game Performance Database (GPD), the New Core Games report demonstrates how that happens. Aristocrat is the supplier with the highest percentage of Top New Core Games tracked this month at 30.4 percent. Fu Dai Lian Lian Boosted and Cashman Bingo themes continue to penetrate the market.

Scientific Games began to reverse trends thanks to new games like Rich Little Piggies. And the AGS trend is strong with 4.6 percentage point growth over last six months thanks to games such as Captain Riches and Lucky O’Reilly. To subscribe to any Eilers-Fantini report, contact Rick Eckert at reckert@ekgamingllc.com.

6

Key Insights - % of Top NEW Core Games

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

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NUTSHELL

“They

5

Questions Earle Hall Chief Executive Officer, AXES.ai

Said It”

“Operators are either not making suitable resources available or are simply putting commercial objectives ahead of regulatory ones.

This is simply unacceptable.”

—Andrew Rhodes, CEO, U.K. Gambling Commission, on the failure of gaming operators when it comes to gambling harms

E

arle Hall is one of the most respected technology providers in the industry. He is vice chairman of the International Gaming Standards Association, and has been running the groundbreaking AXES.ai for more than 10 years. The company is a leader in innovative casino management systems and cashless transactions, and an advocate of the use of blockchain in gaming. He sat down with GGB Publisher Roger Gros in January at his offices in Las Vegas to talk about his company and its recent success. To hear and watch a full version of this podcast, visit GGBMagazine.com.

GGB: It sounds like you had a great year for AXES.ai. Give us a little background on which product or platform has really driving this success for you.

Earle Hall: Like one of my board members recently said, “Earle, you guys have been an overnight success

1 2 3 4 5

that’s been 10 years in the making.” That’s probably true, but we showed up way before the industry really needed us, and we were serving niche markets. But 2021 has been the year of cashless in the United States, and that’s the reason we’ve started to educate clients on the difference between open and closed loop, because we’ve been doing closed loop forever. We started talking to them around 2013, but that being said this year, everybody started to turn towards a transactional cashless client, which works best in an open loop system.

Let’s talk about cashless transactions—how does your product work?

Because of the fact that we’ve been doing closed loop since the beginning of the company, we have developed a complete stand-alone, cloud-based system. We have our own TITO smart card plug-ins. When you’re in a closed looped environment, it means all the parts work together already. We have a cloud that has data collection alerts and events management automatic reporting. The cashless aspect is just another piece of what we built. So in the closed loop environment, whether you want to use TITO, whether you want to use smartcard, even though we’ve had our players app available since 2013, not very many clients were using it—until Covid and the connotation that cash carries. All of a sudden people started looking towards our app.

Do you work with other cashless providers like Sightline Payments or Everi?

Not yet. We are still evaluating the most efficient and frictionless open-loop solutions for each jurisdiction. Our vision since the beginning is that we will provide the most efficient ways of getting the money to the casino and the players... We provide every other piece except open loop for now; as for the openloop piece, you need a strong, viable, integral company such as Sightline to do it. On the closed-loop side, we have clients in more than 40 countries, with millions of transactions a day on our cloud infrastructure.

But as the open loop becomes more important and clients call us and say they want to give their players the ability to put money in the machines directly from the player’s app, that’s where we reach out to the regional open-loop players and ask if they want to plug in.

Tell us about your AIMS casino management system. How is it different than the traditional systems?

First of all, it’s sitting in the cloud, so there’s no hardware except a small black box, which is its trade name, sitting inside of the slot machine. It’s an IoT device that picks up the all the data from the slot machines regardless of the language or the viability of the data. Our IoT device collects the data, encrypts it and sends it to the cloud with our proprietary protocol that is ultra-secure, lightning fast and respects military-grade communications. So if a client needs a specific report that nobody else in the world needs, our development team does it and they populate it into the cloud. So our clients are updated as often as or even faster than Netflix.

Tell us about a partnership you forged in 2021.

Last year we built a really interesting strategic alliance with a company called QCI, which was co-founded

by Andrew Cardno, one of the most brilliant minds in gaming. We migrated in all of their business intelligence tools into our system, and it really is bringing all of our data to life in AXES.ai. By the way, the AI doesn’t stand for artificial intelligence; it stands for actionable intelligence. So in other words, it’s great to have loads of data. It’s great to have algorithms, but if they’re not telling you what to do to be better, safer, faster, more profitable, well, they’re not really worth anything.

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Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

CALENDAR February 15-17: World Game Protection Conference, Tropicana Las Vegas. Produced by World Game Protection. For more information, visit WorldGameProtection.com.

March 1-4: SiGMA Africa 2022, Nairobi, Kenya.

Produced by SiGMA. For more information, visit SiGMA.world/Africa.

March 14-16: Casino Marketing Bootcamp, New Orleans, Louisiana. Produced by J Carcamo & Associates. For more information, visit CasinoMarketingBootcamp.com.

March 21-22: iGaming Next New York City ’22, The Convene, 46th Street, New York City. Produced by iGaming Next. For more information, visit iGamingNext.com/NYC22.

March 22-23: ASEAN Gaming Summit, Shangri La at the Fort, Manila, Philippines. Produced by Asian Gaming Brief. For more information, visit AseanGaming.com.

March 23-25: SPiCE India (Strategic Platform for iGaming Conference & Exhibition), Goa Marriott Resort & Spa, Goa. Produced by Eventus International. For more information, visit sportsbettingevents.com.

April 5: Prague Gaming Summit, Vienna House Andel’s Prague. Produced by Hipther. For more information, visit hipther.com/events/ praguegamingsummit.

April 12-14: ICE London, ExCeL Centre, London.

Produced by Clarion Gaming. For more information, visit ICELondon.uk.com.

April 13-14: iGB Affiliate London, ExCeL Centre, London. Produced by Clarion Gaming.

For more information, visit london.igbaffiliate.com.

April 19-22: Indian Gaming 2022, Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, California.

Produced by the National Indian Gaming Association and Clarion Gaming. For more information, visit IndianGaming.org/events.

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AMERICAN GAMING ASSOCIATION

By the Numbers The gaming industry rebound from the pandemic is complete, and this will prove it

2

021 was a monumental year for gaming. The industry recovered in recordsetting fashion as gaming continued to expand across geographies and verticals. We strengthened our responsible gaming efforts and, most importantly, we supported our communities through their own pandemic recovery.

With 2021 now in the rearview and the year’s final revenue reports filtering in, here are the numbers that tell the story of gaming’s recovery.

44 Forty-four states now offer some form of commercial or tribal gaming, with commercial gaming expanding to Arizona, Connecticut, Virginia and Wyoming for the first time in 2021.

50 The U.S. commercial gaming industry generated more than $50 billion in gaming revenue for the first time ever, shattering the previous record of $44 billion set in 2019.

55 Americans legally wagered more than $55 billion on sports in 2021, generating over $4 billion in revenue.

130 By year’s end, 130 million American adults lived in states with live, legal sports betting.

3 Three states—Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania—generated more than $1 billion each in iGaming revenue. Prior to 2021, no state had reached that milestone.

10 Casinos in 10 states now offer digital payment options on the casino floor, giving consumers payment choice, bolstering responsible gaming tools and adding transparency to transactions.

10

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

By Dave Forman

80 Responsible gaming messaging reached more people, with nearly 80 percent of gamblers aware of at least one responsible gaming resource.

153 At least 153 casinos across 31 states supported the health and safety of their communities by serving as Covid-19 vaccination sites in 2021.

“

Americans legally wagered more than $55 billion on sports in 2021, generating over $4 billion in revenue.

”

While it’s too soon to tell if 2022 will match last year’s revenue numbers, there’s reason for optimism for another great year for gaming to come. As we head into the year, American Gaming Association member CEOs are positive about the future direction of the industry: three-quarters expect to increase the pace of hiring and nearly half expect the short-term business situation to improve even further.

We expect this year will see Americans continue to select casinos as their first-choice entertainment destination, payments modernization accelerate, millions more Americans gain access to the safety of the legal sports betting market and gaming grow its commitment to its communities in new and unique ways.

The AGA will also continue to do its part to drive gaming’s full recovery by championing the industry in Washington, D.C., leading on responsible gaming and communicating the important contributions of gaming companies to their communities. Working together, 2022 is set to be another remarkable year for gaming.

Dave Forman is senior director, research at the American Gaming Association.

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FANTINI’S FINANCE

Bring It On Home Long-term investing can be challenging when faced with the shadow of inflation

T

he operative word for investors in 2022 may be redux, meaning bringing back.

It could be 1970s redux if inflation becomes the untamed bear sapping savings and driving down the value of investments.

It could be early 1980s redux if the Fed decides it must aggressively raise interest rates.

It could be 2020 redux if the omicron or some future variant of Covid causes a reimposition of travel restrictions and perhaps at least partial business shutdowns, if not the full lockdowns of two years ago.

Recently, technology stocks of all stripes have been selling off, and most especially those of companies that have no profits, but merely the promise of profits someday. That includes iGaming and sports betting stocks that recently were sky-high as they traded on extraordinary multiples of estimated revenues three and four and five years out, as many have no profits upon which to value them.

If either or both of those scenarios come to pass, it will not make for pretty stock action.

Those who remember the stagflation of the 1970s recall that the 1973-74 bear market was one of the worst and most depressing ever. It wasn’t a crash; it was a grinding down day by dispiriting day.

Of course, the sudden lockdowns of February 2020 set off a panic that shattered consumer discretionary stocks, including gamers, leaving some of them down 90 percent.

For fundamental, long-term investors it can be frustrating as such phenomena become the overwhelming determiners of the direction of stock prices.

But for the patient, fundamental investor, dislocations that have little or nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a company present buying opportunities.

That may be especially true in gaming. The reality is that gambling will be here after inflation subsides and long after the present Covid pandemic is a distant memory.

12

By Frank Fantini

Well-run companies with reasonable debt structures will survive to enjoy good times and to take advantage of speculative competitors demolished by the powerful, though ephemeral, economic forces.

Let’s use Penn National as an example. In early 2020, the stock was selling in the mid-to-upper $30s. Then Covid struck. PENN plunged to an intraday low of $3.75 on March 18, having lost 90 percent of its value. Today, even after its roller coaster ride of the past year largely because of fickle investors in online gaming and sports betting, the

The opportunity if “inflation and/or Covid

create a bear market is perhaps best expressed by Warren Buffet’s famous advice to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. Anyone who bought gaming stocks in March 2020 can attest to the wisdom of those words.

”

stock is in the upper $40s. In other words, the opportunistic investor who bought at the bottom is enjoying a greater than 1,000 percent profit. The long-term investor not shaken out of the stock by Covid fears still enjoys a profit of 30 percent or more in less than two years.

PENN is an extreme example, but is representative of the trend in gaming stocks during and since that time, both among casino companies and suppliers.

The opportunity if inflation and/or Covid create a bear market is perhaps best expressed by Warren Buffet’s famous advice to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. Any-

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

one who bought gaming stocks in March 2020 can attest to the wisdom of those words.

The advice as to where to invest during inflation is almost universal: companies with pricing power, those with hard assets such as real estate and those that pay dividends.

Casino stocks score on pricing power. If people want to gamble, they will sit at a $25 blackjack table as well as a $10 table. Those who play a 91 percent payback slot machine will play a 90 percent payback machine, by and large.

As mentioned here before, gaming REITs satisfy the hard assets and dividend payout standards. And as Gaming and Leisure Properties and VICI Properties demonstrate with their latest transactions, the companies are finding ways to grow. Indeed, as part of those real estate acquisitions, both are positioning themselves to benefit beyond rents as GLPI partners with Cordish Companies’ future growth of its Live! properties and VICI prepares to invest up to $1.5 billion to finance Hard Rock International’s plan to remake the Mirage.

Another old line is that demographics are the future. The population of Las Vegas is rapidly growing, and that is unlikely to slow in the foreseeable future. Several companies—Red Rock Resorts, Golden Entertainment, Boyd Gaming— benefit from that demographic growth. It also helps that they have embedded value in the real estate they own.

Those companies have also experienced leaders who have demonstrated their ability to execute on their business plans.

That brings us to another favorite line from Buffet about bear markets: Sometimes, the market puts America’s best companies on sale.

If a bear market does come, there won’t be a need to search for speculative growth stories. Just look for profitable companies with proven management executing prudent growth strategies and whose stocks are selling at bargain prices.

Frank Fantini is principal at Fantini Advisors, investors and consultants with a focus on gaming.

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AGEMupdate AGEM Member Profiles Silver Member Profile Company: Crane Payment Innovations (CPI) Web Address: www.meigroup.com

Crane Payment Innovations (CPI) produces products for the global gaming market, including automated gaming and cash handling machines for AWP, VLT, betting halls, amusement and casino slot machines and redemption kiosks.

Bronze Member Profile Company: Acres Manufacturing Company Web Address: www.acresmanufacturing.com

Acres Manufacturing’s latest innovation, Foundation Casino Management System, reports any SAS meter change in real time, revealing what really influences spend and loyalty decisions and giving casinos ownership and control over this data, allowing it to be interfaced to anything the casino wants.

Associate Member Profile Company: Advantech-Innocore Web Address: www.innocoregaming.com

AGEM Board of Directors Actions for January 2022 • The first AGEM monthly board meeting of the new year kicked off with the election of AGEM officers, after a slate was presented to members at the December meeting. President David Lucchese embarks on his second year of a two-year term and therefore was not part of the vote. The following officers were approved to serve for a one-year term: Vice President Luke Orchard, IGT; Vice President Bob Parente, Scientific Games; Vice President Elaine Hodgson, Incredible Technologies; Vice President Ryan Comstock, Ainsworth; Secretary Tom Jingoli, Konami; Treasurer Hector Fernandez, Aristocrat. Lucchese also made a special mention and paid thanks to longstanding officer Eric Fisher, Crane Payment Innovations (CPI), who stepped down from his officer position.

• In December, AGEM Executive Director Marcus Prater and the organization’s regulatory general counsel Dan Reaser presented a petition to the Nevada Gaming Commission to allow for gaming technology in the cloud. After the meeting, Gaming Control Board Chair Brin Gibson and Technology Division Chief Jim Barbee requested a review of specific wording in the petition before it is rolled out for public comment. Once complete, the petition will be published and commence a public comment period. As there were no red flags raised, it is hoped the whole process will be completed and approved in the next couple of months.

• AGEM’s Mexico Committee has seen some changes recently. Carlos Carrión of Aristocrat has been heading up the committee but recently moved back to Las Vegas, and the organization feels it is important to have a representative on the ground based in Mexico. As a result, AGEM is pleased to announce that Eduardo Alvarez of AGS has agreed to head up the seven-member committee. AGEM would also like to take this opportunity to thank Carlos Carrión for all his good work in the region over the years.

• AGEM Director of Responsible Gaming Connie Jones has worked very closely with the Nevada Council on Problem Gaming for many years, and was recently elected as secretary treasurer at the council’s annual meeting. The meeting agenda also included election of officers, and saw Jennifer Shatley re-elected as president and Tony Cabot re-elected as vice president. The meeting covered responsible gaming initiatives, community awareness/education and budgeting. AGEM is a major supporter of this very important organization and will continue to promote and provide support which is especially needed as we transition out of the pandemic.

• AGEM welcomed a new Associate member at the January meeting, taking the total number of members worldwide to 172. Lewis Roca is a full-service law firm based in Las Vegas. The company provides a wide range of services for a sizeable list of gaming clients and is one of the largest law firms in Nevada, plus locations in nine other Western U.S. states.

Forthcoming Events • The National Indian Gaming Association’s (NIGA) Indian Gaming Tradeshow & Convention will take place April 19-22 in Anaheim, California. Historically, AGEM has supported this event as a Platinum Sponsor. Members approved a sponsorship request of $25,000 to continue to support the forthcoming show.

AGEMindex

Dedicated to gaming since 1998, Advantech-Innocore offers the broadest range of PC-compatible products for casinos, AWPs and arcades, and continues to develop new products to suit the unique hardware requirements of the evolving gaming industry worldwide.

AGEM is an international trade association representing manufacturers of electronic gaming devices, systems, lotteries and components for the gaming industry. The association works to further the interests of gaming equipment manufacturers throughout the world.

Through political action, trade show partnerships, information dissemination and good corporate citizenship, the members of AGEM work together to create benefits for every company within the organization. Together, AGEM and its member organizations have assisted regulatory commissions and participated in the legislative process to solve problems and create a positive business environment.

In December 2021, the AGEM Index improved by 11.39 points to 971.59, marking a 1.2 percent increase from the prior month. Compared to one year ago, the index increased by 284.47 points for an annual growth rate of 41.4 percent. In the latest period, seven of the AGEM Index companies reported stock price increases. This ultimately led to eight companies posting positive contributions and four companies recording negative contributions to the overall index. The top contributor to the monthly index was International Game Technology PLC (NYSE: IGT), whose 7 percent increase in stock price led to a 7.98-point gain for the index. Scientific Games Corporation (Nasdaq: SGMS) was also a significant contributor to the overall growth in the index, adding 5.65 points as a result of its 4.6 percent rise in stock price. The largest negative contributor to the index was Konami Corporation (TYO: 9766), whose 5 percent drop in stock price led to an 8.48-point decrease in the AGEM Index. All three major U.S. stock indices increased over the month, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 experiencing increases of 5.4 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ experienced a 0.8 percent increase.

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Under

ATTACK

What to do when your casino is held for ransom

By Andrew Cardno Co-Authored by Hanna McCall

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here are two types of casinos: those that have been held for ransom and those that will be. We’re hearing about ransom attacks at the rate of about one per month, and this is likely to only be the tip of the iceberg. What is even more frightening is that the ransom stories being told are about how operators are paying to reopen; these ransoms are emboldening well-organized teams of “ransomers” to infiltrate gaming organizations large and small.

Your organization needs to prepare for ransomware attacks— the best time to do this was five years ago, the second-best time is now.

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Ransomware Attackers Have Infiltrated Casinos Gaming systems, a decade ago, were protected by obscurity during a time when any information about them was difficult to obtain and they were isolated from the world outside of gaming; today, this is no longer the case.

One might consider the gaming system being used at their property—it is probable that systems running the operations were developed sometime between 25 and 35 years ago along with a wide array of additional systems, inherently adding a possible point of weakness for each

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new system, and the casino operations are dependent on these systems to run the business. In today’s world, cyber agents are not only able to find information about obscure gaming systems, but they have experience attacking them and are actively infiltrating the casino industry with increasing success via ransomware attacks.

We can see in other industries, as the criminals concentrate on evolving their attacks at an industry vertical, they develop specialized techniques for the victimized industry of their choice. Furthermore, ransomware attackers become more proficient and continue to refine their malicious tactics with each attempt to hack a business, gaining insight about how to target attacks in that industry with greater efficacy.

The health care industry is one that is undoubtedly familiar with the relentlessness of cyberattacks after having cost the industry an amount in excess of $20 billion over just the last five years. The gaming industry needs to learn from the experience of these other industries to prepare for the oncoming ransomware attacks.

Casinos are prime candidates for ransomware attacks, as massive amounts of cash touching their gaming systems create a highly motivating incentive for cybercriminals to target your industry. In addition to the massive cash incentive hackers seek though carrying out ransomware attacks, it is important to be aware of the significant risk that is accompanied with the highly sensitive information in a casino’s customer database.

Therefore, it is not just the casinos that are being threatened by cybercriminals; your customers are just as much of a target. Consider what a criminal holding a casino ransom might do with the information including highnet-worth individuals’ data, such a their behavioral and spending patterns.

On top of the tremendous deliberation, yet immediate action, required during a ransomware attack in which the result of any decision made is anything but certain, your casino is having to mitigate the damage that has been done to the customer relationships. Even if your casino is fortunate enough to have skated by without its customers being personally attacked during the cyber breach, will the customers even return once the property has reopened if trust has been lost?

For properties fortunate enough to have not been successfully attacked by a hacker yet—and especially those that have—that don’t already have a substantial cybersecurity defense in place, it is well past time to implement a comprehensive cyber defense into your operating budget, because more likely than not, your organization is already exposed to thousands of attempted cyberattacks every month.

Recognizing Ransomware Attacks Ransomware attacks are one of the most difficult cyberattack methods to combat, so it is important to be mindful of how they present themselves and the undoubted fact that they are actively attempting to breach the casino systems. Pretty much anyone who has ever had an email account has probably received at least one, if not hundreds of terribly obvious phishing emails and sent them to the trash bin.

Casinos are prime candidates for ransomware attacks, as massive amounts of cash touching their gaming systems create a highly motivating incentive for cybercriminals to target your industry.

However, it is imperative to remain cognizant of phishing emails that are not as obvious as one might assume. It is unsettling how shockingly simple it is for anyone to send an email from a fake address that rather legitimately appears to be the manager of the employee who failed to recognize that something wasn’t quite right about the message.

There are dozens of fundamental computer systems within a gaming operation, so it is important to always be aware of any known issues and make sure that only those who should be aware of these faults are the only ones with knowledge of their existence, because ransomware agents are able to take advantage of these weaknesses to begin attacking the systems.

These opportunities for cyberattackers include zero-day vulnerabilities.

These zero-day attacks are attacks that take place through known weaknesses in core systems, such as Microsoft Windows. These attacks are virtually unstoppable. Attackers can, for example, initiate zero-day attacks at organization-issued iPhones. Consider that the web browser Chrome experienced and resolved at least six zero-day flaws last year; hopefully this example sheds some perspective on how very much possible—or more so, likely—this is at your property.

Trojan horses are another common threat that imposes hidden malicious code onto a legitimate software program after initially making its way onto the device through a downloaded software that appears to be legitimate by the victim of downloading it. Cybercriminals even attempt to bribe casino employees as a means of obtaining internal information or access.

Ransomware Defense: Steps for Mitigation The first step in mitigation is to install a redundant gaming system at the property. By implementing this system, the property will be enabled to continue operations by merely switching to the redundant gaming system in the event of a ransomware cyberattack. The backup gaming system, albeit a likely imperfect solution, will accomplish the job of keeping the business open.

The backup system that runs on the second SAS port should allow for it to instantly fail down to an entirely different physical environment. Starting this system in passive monitoring mode, it can then be switched to an active FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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REAL-TIME REALITIES gaming system if the property perceives a cyberattack taking place. When taking this step, in order for it to remain effective in the event of a ransomware attack, the organization will need make sure that real-time player card, points, and promotion data are maintained.

Another part can be added to this first recommended step as an additional security measure: implement a manual system at the property. This will be tremendously useful in the event that the ransomware attack imposes a complete system lockdown.

The second action that should always be taken is probably the most obvious; back up the property’s casino data. Backups should be running every minute, and are good practice to implement if the operation is not already doing so. In addition to data backups serving as a crucial method of steering clear of encryption attacks due to the possibility that the encrypted data can perhaps be restored, backups also serve the purpose of ensuring that the organization can be restored to business as usual in case a power outage occurs, while minimizing the loss of information.

Isolating and segmenting the casino’s systems is the third step. The systems are running on a physical network, so make sure that the necessary gaming systems are capable of completely being isolated from the external environment and any other systems. This process of ensuring complete isolation can be expected to require diligent planning, keeping in mind that some games—wide-area progressives, for example—will require external connection. By taking this precaution to create complete isolation, a casino will allow the organization to entirely cut off critical systems and allow for logins.

The fourth step, running full cybersecurity defense mechanisms, will be an increasingly useful tool in defending against certain ransomware attacks.

These highly sophisticated cyber defense mechanisms go much further than basic penetration testing, extending the use of artificial intelligence (AI)and machine learning (ML)-based active monitoring tools to identify the existence of unusual sequences of input/output functions.

For example, a conspicuous change in an operation’s daily incremental backup volume will alert system administrators. In addition to being an essential indicator that a ransomware attack on the casino is happening before a human would be able to realize it, it is incredibly useful as it helps identify the most recent known good backup during the process of recovering.

A fully implemented cybersecurity defense mechanism accompanied by a well-resourced cybersecurity defense team that constantly monitors cyber protection will prove to be an immensely valuable asset to the casino’s cybersecurity efforts. The aforementioned AI/ML applications aren’t a perfect defense on their own despite providing additional significant layers of protection to an operation’s cyber defense; therefore, the software used in conjunction with a serious cyber security defense team should be an essential part of every gaming operation’s budget.

Without taking these more drastic security measures and ensuring that a cyber defense budget is in place for them, the casino will be spotted by cyberattackers as an easy target and should start planning their ransomware defense now because it will only be a matter of time until the attack commences, if it is not happening already.

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• The ransomware attacks have discovered casinos. These ever-more-sophisticated ransomware attacks are specifically targeting your backup data and administrator functions to disable the ability to restart the organization.

• Your gaming operation, once protected by obscurity, faces the growing threat of increasingly sophisticated ransomware, with successful attacks being launched by criminals against gaming organizations from around the world.

• Ransomware is a part of a broader cyberattack that could involve compromising your key personal, critical systems and administrative functions.

• Ensure your property is ready to run in a protected cocoon. Land-based properties have one major advantage in that you can run unconnected from the internet. Have a process in place to do this and practice this isolation plan.

Fighting Cyber Crime Taking precaution and having active defenses against ransomware attackers is an absolutely necessary element of a secure gaming operation in today’s world. Even more so, it is necessary to maintain the integrity of the business operation and continuing to earn the trust it requires from its patrons.

Should a casino choose not to take additional cybersecurity measures, you might want to consider whether you are prepared, both personally and professionally, to take on the excruciating hassle of attempting to cope with a cybercriminal. If that somehow seems like a manageable task to anyone, then a substantial amount of your budgeting should be dedicated to purchasing Bitcoin in preparation for paying the ransom of your next attack.

However, keep in mind that the cybercriminal could very well take the untraceable currency and whatever other demands the casino has ceded to without returning whatever casino assets they held ransom.

Additionally, ceding to a hacker’s demands simply encourages these cybercriminals to further engage in illegal behavior and is generally regarded as a very bad idea by the intelligence community.

Committing to cybersecurity defense, on the other hand, will be a much a more valuable and efficient use of time and resources for your casino.

Andrew Cardno is an established thought leader in visual analytics, with over 21 years of experience in the field. He has led private Ph.D./masters research teams in visualization/development for over 15 years, which won Cardno two Smithsonian Laureates and more than 12 innovation awards.

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Security & Surveillance SPECIAL REPORT

The Top 20 Casino Gambling Scams of the Century A look back at significant casino scams from 2000 to 2021

By Willy Allison

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wo years ago, Bill Zender and I sat down and started going through our notes from the past 20 years on casino scams. Our goal was to compile our “Top 20” scams for a presentation at the 2020 World Game Protection Conference—a kind of retrospective of the last 20 years where we could share our findings and lessons learned with students of the games. The conference never took place.

Our criteria to make the Top 20 was simple: how much money casinos lost (estimated), how creative it was, how far spread it was (geographically) and how long it went on. To qualify for our Top 20, the scam must have beat casinos (or players) out of at least $1 million.

Exact numbers for casino scams are hard to come by, and often underreported. So I took the conservative officially reported numbers and the insider whispers of unofficial numbers, and rounded them off to the nearest million.

How long and where the scam went on is almost impossible to ascertain exactly. The casino industry doesn’t keep or compile that sort of information. It should be noted that casino scams are often copycatted by different groups and perpetrated in areas of the world that don’t have cheating laws or in casinos that either don’t want to or are not required to report casino scams (i.e., illegal casinos). At the end of the day we only know what we know.

In this article, the 20 scams we selected are listed in no specific order (more on that later). Each scam has a brief synopsis of no more than 100 words. No names of people or casinos are mentioned; the focus is on the modus operandi. This is done in the hope that even though the list may cause debate (we hope so), the historical account of these significant scams can be used as an educational reference guide for casino managers in their quest for achieving effective game protection.

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THE TOP 20 SCAMS The Baccarat False Shuffle Crooked dealers are hired by players to conduct false shuffles. During a shoe, a player writes down the order of the cards as they are placed in the discard rack. At the completion of the shoe the dealer takes the eight decks and proceeds to shuffle. The dealer purposely keeps a clump of up to 100 cards to the side and shuffles around it, thus maintaining the sequence of cards (slug) in the same order that was previously recorded. In the next shoe, the players wait until the slug appears and are able to calculate future results and bet accordingly.

Casino losses: $10M-$100M

The Baccarat False Shuffle Camera Crooked dealers are hired by players to conduct false shuffles. During the last step of the shuffle, the dealer “high riffles” approximately two decks of cards followed by a “step through” false shuffle. A woman accomplice seated at the table rests her bag on the table while the dealer shuffles. The bag contains a concealed camera that records the shuffle. She leaves the table, returns to her hotel room and plays back the video to obtain the sequence of cards. She relays this information to players back at the table who wait until the slug appears and bet accordingly.

Casino losses: $10M-$100M

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The Poker Card Reading Cellphone The Roulette Computer A player uses a concealed wearable computer programmed to predict into what section of the wheel the ball will fall. After the dealer spins the ball, the computer user inputs the speed of the ball and the wheel by clocking reference points on the wheel head. The data is input using toe taps in a shoe wired to the computer. After the calculation is made, information is relayed to the player via a miniature Bluetooth earpiece communicating what section of the wheel to bet. The roulette computer gives players a 40 percent edge over the house.

Casino losses: $1M-$10M

A crooked poker dealer swaps a deck into a game with invisible (barcodelike) markings on the edges of the cards. A player in collusion with the dealer has software in his cellphone that can analyze and identify the markings via the camera. Before a game, the player enters how many players are at the table into his cellphone. After the shuffle the dealer straightens the deck and places it on the table in view of the cellphone resting on the table.

The software calculates who has the best ranked cards and alerts the player via a miniature earpiece.

Casino losses: N/A

The VIP Host with Inside Information

Using various methods to distract the dealer, players swap an unsecured portable shuffle machine from a baccarat table with the same model machine retrofitted with a micro-camera inside. The camera is positioned to be able to transmit the final sequence of the riffled cards to a retrofitted cellphone installed with software that converts the video images to a text format that reveals the order of the cards and results of all the hands for the next shoe.

Casino losses: $1M-$10M

As a precautionary measure, a casino uses a machine to check that pre-shuffled cards for baccarat (eight decks) are shuffled correctly. However, the machine exposes the entire sequence of the cards to a surveillance camera before they go to the tables. A VIP host persuades management to give him access to the casino surveillance system claiming that his high roller client requested his independent oversight. After reviewing video of the deck checker machine and recording the card sequences, the VIP host relays the “inside information” including the shoe identifier serial numbers to his high roller friend.

Casino losses: $10M-$100M

The Dice Sliding Teams

The Baccarat Shoe Camera

An old scam that keeps on giving. A skilled player slides one of the two dice so that there is a fixed parameter of results that move the house edge to the player and his associates. To get by the scrutiny of the game caller and other staff at the table, other team members provide distractions and obstruction at the moment the shooter rolls the dice to ensure the illegal roll is not picked up.

Casino losses: $1M-$10M

Casino equipment maintenance employees rigged a number of baccarat shoes with a miniature camera and a remote-controlled device that pushed the first card up to reveal its index. At the commencement of a hand, a player in collusion with the maintenance employees remotely activates the device to reveal the first card to the camera. The video is live-streamed back to the player’s cellphone. The player then communicates with other team players what to bet. By knowing the first card out for each round of play in baccarat, the players gained an approximate edge of 7 percent over the house.

Casino losses: $10M-100M

The Camera in the Auto Shuffler

The Cut Card Camera A baccarat player who volunteers to cut the cards has a camera up his sleeve connected to a video storage device. In collusion, the dealer turns the eight decks 90 degrees to the player. Before inserting the cut card, the player glides it across the top of the cards and scrapes his fingernail across the corner of the cards to reveal the indexes of a sequence of cards to the camera up his sleeve. The player leaves the table after the cut, reviews the video in a private place and relays the sequence to players at the table.

Casino losses: $100M+

The Jackpot Prediction Computer A computer hacker acquires a slot machine, analyzes the (pseudo) random number generator and creates a sequence prediction program. Organized trained teams are dispersed around the world to locate the specific machine type in casinos. After locating a machine, they record or stream a portion of play with their cellphone cameras for computer analysis. After the analysis is completed the cellphone is synchronized to the time sequence of results. The cellphone sends vibration alerts to the player signaling when to push the play button. The computer guides the player to small jackpots that fly under the radar of casino managers.

Casino losses: $10M-$100M

The Dealer Button Camera A crooked baccarat dealer swaps out a button on his vest with a similar button concealing a miniature camera wired to a portable video storage device.

During the shuffle the dealer video records a sequence of cards by “high riffling.” To keep the sequence intact, he follows with a “step through” false shuffle before straightening the cards and offering the cut card to an accomplice. When the dealer goes on a break he finds a private place, plugs his video storage device into a computer, reviews the video and texts the sequence back to accomplices at the table.

Casino losses: $1M-$10M

The Card Mucking Teams A baccarat player attaches a device up his sleeve known as a hold-out device.

The device is like a robotic arm that holds a playing card. When the card can increase the value of a hand, the player will activate a switch that will extend the card into the player’s hand to facilitate a switch (muck). The switched-out card is used for future hands. The “starter” card is obtained in various ways, including stealing a card from the casino or counterfeiting.

Casino losses: $10M-$100M

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The Slot Machine Button Sequence Glitch A player discovered that a certain type of video poker machine has a software glitch that can be exploited. The “double-up bug” allows players to replay winning jackpots with higher wagers. The player sits at a machine playing 1 cent a spin. When he eventually scores a jackpot, he doesn’t cash out but immediately hits a specific sequence of buttons replaying the winning hand but with a maximum wager this time.

Casino losses: $1M+

The Craps Call Bet Collusion Caper Craps dealers in collusion with players pay long-odds “hop bets” that don’t exist. As the dice are rolled, one of the players in cahoots with the dealers will mumble something that no one can understand, as if it was a call bet (or maybe not). After the dice come to rest, the crooked dealer will pay the player for a winning hop bet.

Casino losses: $1M+

The Baccarat Card Carrier Thieves A team of thieves gathers around a card storage cabinet in a high-limit baccarat room, obstructing the view of staff and surveillance. They break into the cabinet and steal a card carrier containing 416 pre-shuffled cards stored for future use on a game. They go to their hotel room for a short period of time, where they open the carrier and record the sequence of the cards before returning them to the cabinet in the same manner they removed them. They wait until the cards are put into play and bet accordingly.

Casino losses: $10M-$100M

The Camera Van Teams A player with a concealed camera up his sleeve plays Three Card Poker with a dealer who inadvertently lifts her cards before placing them face down on the table. The player positions himself so that the camera can view the card values. The camera broadcasts the live play back to a van outside the casino. Accomplices view and identify the dealer’s hand and communicate with the player at the table via a hidden earpiece.

Casino losses: $1M+

The Employee Slot Machine Riggers A team of crooked slot employees with access to the inside of machines rigged them to pay out bogus credits. Using their expertise they were able to change the “coin in” amounts and delete the history of the false and fraudulent amounts from the machines. The ill-gotten gains were cashed out by their wives and partners over a 4.5-year period who set up shell companies and multiple bank accounts to “wash” the stolen money.

Casino losses: $1M-$10M

The Face-Up Baccarat Spread Camera A casino using manufacturer pre-shuffled cards on their baccarat games introduces a procedure mandating that the dealer spreads approximately two decks of cards face up across the table so that players can see the cards are mixed. A player in collusion with the dealer uses a concealed camera up his sleeve to record the two decks. The dealer conducts a false shuffle keeping the two-deck sequence intact. The player leaves the game and reviews the video. On his return the player and his friends wait for the sequence to begin, calculate upcoming results and bet accordingly.

Casino losses: $1M+

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The Exploitation of Asymmetrical Cards A woman searched for casinos that used automatic shufflers on baccarat, open-faced shoes and poorly designed and manufactured cards that could be “edge sorted.” Conspiring with a big player, they requested and were granted changes in the casino’s standard procedures. The most significant changes were dealing cards face down and having the dealer reveal each card to them individually before she instructed the card be turned straight over, or to the side. This facilitated a scheme where high and low cards could be identified before wagering in future rounds of play, gaining a considerable edge over the house.

Casino losses: $10M-$100M

The Dealer Memorizing Cards During the baccarat shuffle procedures, an unsupervised dealer takes approximately 20 cards, thumbs through them face up and commits the order to memory. He then conducts a false shuffle that leaves the 20-card sequence intact. In collusion with the players at the table he waits until the memorized sequence appears and calculates the results of the next three to five hands in his head. Before each hand is dealt, he discretely gestures to his accomplices playing at the table what to bet on.

Casino losses: $1M-$10M

But Wait, There’s More…

There are plenty more scams that just missed the cut. Some are slight variations of scams on our list. Technology advancements in concealed cameras, wireless and computer technology have made some of the scams more sophisticated and efficient, but the principles of gaining inside information remain the same.

In most of the scams listed there is more to the story. In some cases I’ve purposely left some of the details out. In others, I admit I just don’t have all of the details. I also have no doubt there are other scams that could make our Top 20 that we simply don’t know about. But hopefully there is enough information included to help casino managers understand major threats, review their own practices for vulnerabilities and take the necessary steps to reduce the risk.

At the World Game Protection Conference in February, I will discuss a lot of these scams in more detail in my CORE training seminar on table games protection. We will have a chance to dissect the scams and discuss what we learned as an industry to better protect our games.

World Game Protection Conference attendees will also have a chance to win a copy of Steve Forte’s latest book Gambling Sleight of Hand: Forte Years of Research. Simply read this article, and while at the WGPC complete the survey on the show app naming in order your top five scams from our list. As a survey participant, your name will go into the draw for the prize. On the last day of the conference we will hold a draw for the prize and announce the “WGPC Attendees Top 5 Casino Scams of the Century.”

Willy Allison is the founder and managing director of the World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas. He started in the casino business in 1987 and has worked in surveillance management, consulted for major casino organizations and conducted game protection training seminars around the world.

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Security & Surveillance SPECIAL REPORT

Casino Security in a Covid Environment The world changed during the pandemic, and the casino industry did too, especially the security department

By Alan W. Zajic

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hen Covid first appeared and started causing casinos to shutter and close, most experienced casino executives thought it was a temporary condition that would soon go away. As we all know now, it obviously is something that the gaming industry will be dealing with for years to come as these new variants to the first Covid-19 virus continue to mutate and spread at higher infection rates with each new version.

All casino and hotel operations including security have been affected by Covid in many different ways, and it has challenged executives to come up with creative solutions to what were once routine and simple operational protocols. As always, casino executives have met those challenges to continue to operate and, in some instances, improve their bottom-line profits.

Many properties have improved revenues and report record high numbers of incoming gross revenue and customer counts even with fewer employees to service the guests. In my travels just this last year, I have found that when I stay at a casino property, many services are no longer available—such as room service—yet, there is no measurable reduction in hotel rate or the “resort fee.”

Restaurants all operate on reduced hours and service at a level that was never tolerated by the guests prior. The complaints must also have dramatically increased. Only time will tell if that will have created a condition that will deter future guests and revenue. And as it has been historically, the customers still come, taking their chances at winning big and getting out and away from the home Covid confinements.

I like to call what we did operationally prior to December 2019 when Covid appeared in the U.S. as “Before Covid,” or “BC.” 22

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Rules, Regulations and Masks, Oh My The barrage of mandates by state governors and other officials has had a tiring effect on gaming operations in all jurisdictions. The on-again/off-again mask rules that are virtually different in every state made it difficult for those casinos that required masks and social distancing to expect the public to know which rules applied when they traveled to their favorite casino.

The rise and fall of the “mask police” has created many issues for the casino executive, too. Customers who by strong conviction will not wear masks were sometimes arrested for trespass by security after the simple request was escalated to an eviction and they refused to leave. Managing slot areas with every other slot machine turned off and plexiglass shields on the gaming tables also proved challenging. The ever-popular buffets that had to close or seriously modify the serving of food also became a headache. But the customers still continued to come.

Some states like Nevada formally created gaming regulations to comply with the orders from the governor on masks and other measures. After a series of large fines were levied against gaming properties in both northern and southern Nevada, all casinos were forced to enforce mandates, causing more challenging confrontations from defiant customers.

Labor Market Challenges There has never been a large labor pool for security officers, and most security directors will tell you that even though they have approved staffing levels, they historically have rarely filled those levels with competent staff. In my work as a consultant, I found that a typical average of 10 percent-15 percent security staff shortage was normal for security departments BC. At-

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“

There has never been a large labor pool for security officers, and most security directors will tell you that even though they have approved staffing levels, they historically have rarely filled those levels with competent staff.

”

tracting qualified and competent security officers has always been a challenge for most gaming properties.

Wages for security officers were always dependent on the jurisdiction, and market conditions and labor expense were fairly predictable from a budgeting standpoint BC. Now the wage range has expanded and, in some instances, surpassed previous levels significantly. Another security consultant in Australia advised me that some casinos were advertising $90 per hour for the holiday period to attract qualified people just for the Christmas and New Year’s period to supplement their already short-staffed operations.

Fast forward to the start of 2022. Labor market conditions have dramatically changed, and some casinos report as high as 50 percent staff shortages in security with very few applicants regardless of wages and benefits offered.

There are many different theories for this shortage in personnel—which although interesting, do not help solve the issue or the lack of people to hire in security.

Attempts at resolving staff shortages have mixed reviews and always associated costs. The constant is that labor costs have risen dramatically regardless.

Some properties started offering signing bonuses with conditions to attempt to keep new employees for extended periods while others relied on the age-old solutions such as job fairs to draw security employees with little results.

Overtime costs have also risen significantly as a result of staff shortages.

Security employee burnout as a result of working additional daily overtime has also been observed at some properties, and should be monitored and tempered when appropriate.

Regardless, with less security personnel working and patrolling the properties, there is less security presence and security footprint in gaming properties

than was traditionally in place BC. This has created a need to re-evaluate what functions security personnel routinely do and prioritize those functions.

Eliminating Non-Security Functions Many properties have taken a fresh look at what functions are performed by security officers to narrow down their minute-by-minute activity. Although this approach merely transfers duties to other departments and does not improve the overall labor challenges, it does provide a higher level of security presence, which ultimately helps reduce the risks of criminal events occurring and impacting the patrons, and future potential litigation as a result.

Most of my work involves legal work as it relates to lawsuits, and my specialty area is casinos and nightclubs. I have never seen the number of lawsuits against casinos as what is occurring currently in courts across the U.S. Notwithstanding that there is a lag time from when an incident occurs until it churns its way through the legal system, there is a noticeable increase in litigation being filed and served shortly after an incident occurs rather than the traditional period just before the statutory time frame of two to five years expires.

The important thing for future litigation is to document what changes and processes you have implemented that will demonstrate your company’s commitment to safety and security for your guests and employees. This includes what changes to the security functions you made, especially those items that are not directly related to a traditional security function.

Non-security functions I have seen range from performing valet-type functions such as limousine services all the way to delivering certain items of FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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“ value to hotel guests. Although important operationally—and using security promotes a certain amount of trust—it will certainly become an issue at trial if someone was hurt as a result of a robbery or other crime and one or more security officers were performing non-security tasks and not patrolling the property.

Supply Chain Issues

Although many gaming properties have more armed security than a decade ago, the vast majority of gaming properties still do not have armed security personnel.

The current supply chain issues in actually receiving the common items used in security and surveillance has also created operational challenges for executives. What was previously quite simple to purchase and receive on loading docks has now become very difficult to actually get. Sales representatives are pushing their products and not truly disclosing the potential time frame from purchase order to delivery, further causing grief for the typical security director and further complicating operations.

What was once a simple purchase of a video camera that covered an important area for surveillance now sometimes has a 12-18-month delivery date delay because of a simple small electronic chip that has become very hard to get. The cost for these goods has also risen, which also has to be considered operationally, especially if that camera is a mandate by regulation or code.

Some directors have told me that what was once discarded as it relates to equipment is now put into a room or vault for possible internal repair or to cannibalize parts to repair others. Finding a technician that has the ability to repair electronics is also quite difficult in today’s environment.

Other routine consumables are not immune to supply chain delays either. Uniforms and related supplies have become harder to obtain and the costs for those goods have also increased as a result.

Increases in Crime Even the dynamics and characteristics of perpetrators of crimes against casino patrons and employees has shifted. Considering that even criminals have gotten creative to increase their illegal income by victimizing casino patrons, that also creates challenges for the security patrolling to provide a reasonably secure place for people to enjoy gaming and all of its amenities.

Home burglary decreased in 2020 primarily because many people were not working and not leaving their homes, and as a result, the opportunity for the criminal was reduced. As people began to attempt to leave home and venture out, the burglary and property crime came back up. Properties that experience the presence of homeless people near their property also have been impacted with increases in panhandling, TITO thefts and other nuisance-type crimes, which again creates more work for the security personnel charged with herding them away like cats from legitimate customers.

As an example, there has been an uptick nationally very recently in what the press calls “follow-home robberies” of patrons who are observed by a criminal inside of a casino with cash who follows them all the way home and then robs them, sometimes with a gun and seriously injuring them.

Pennsylvania appears to have a higher rate of those incidents recently than most states historically.

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cally increase month after month in the U.S., and the sheer availability of guns translates to a future of more gun-related incidents including at gaming properties.

Although many gaming properties have more armed security than a decade ago, the vast majority of gaming properties still do not have armed security personnel. The specialized security squads and response teams of armed security personnel that the larger corporate gaming companies have created and had the ability to deploy have proven beneficial in response to major criminal events, but have minimal deterrence value.

In Nevada where there is a large gaming presence, the murder rate rose by more than 27 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to the FBI. The numbers so far for 2021 appear to increase even more nationally, which is a disturbing trend. Washington state with many rural casinos also saw an increase in homicides by 46 percent in 2020.

Some of those homicides occurred on casino properties or as a result of a victim’s activities at a casino. Aggravated assaults also rose, yet property and other crimes significantly decreased year to year. Violent crimes include homicide, robbery, sexual assault and aggravated assault, and if they occur at a gaming property, they are typically followed by a lawsuit alleging inadequate security or a failure to respond in some manner.

”

Suggestions Going Forward The impacts of less security personnel and increased criminal incidents at casino properties will surely create fertile ground for plaintiff lawyers. The higher turnover of personnel will create challenges for defense attorneys in locating important witnesses years from now when lawsuits finally get to trial, or when it is more prudent to settle.

• Continue to assess and evaluate the security functions and narrow the tasks they perform to those that offer the most protection and oversight of the customers.

• Document quarterly in a department report the difficulties in finding personnel and providing them equipment and training to create evidence that the property did what was reasonable to provide safety and security under difficult circumstances.

• Track and monitor the crimes that occur on your property all the way through the prosecution of perpetrators and chart the results. Be diligent in analyzing the crimes that do occur on your property or as a result of a patron’s activities on your property and track by day of week, time, location and circumstances, and design countermeasures to deter, reduce or eliminate the opportunity for criminals.

• Continue creative solutions to supply chain issues that pose operational challenges and use more out-of-the-box thinking.

Keep doing what the gaming industry does best, adapt to the existing conditions. We know that the customers will continue to come regardless of the Covid conditions as long as regulations allow it.

Alan W. Zajic, CPP, CSP, is an independent security consultant specializing in gaming environments.

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Acres and Acres With Acres Manufacturing, John and Noah Acres hope to transform the entire gaming experience

BY FRANK LEGATO

J

ohn Acres wants to completely change the way casinos serve their slot customers.

He’s done it before. More than once.

Acres invented slot player tracking technology, sold by the company he founded in 1981, Electronic Data Technologies.

(EDT was eventually acquired by IGT.) The existence today of player loyalty clubs that reward repeat play can be traced to this invention.

More innovations would come from Mikohn, which Acres and a partner founded in 1986. The innovator of the modern progressive jackpot system, Mikohn, created for an initial investment of $120,000, was sold for $6 million to Progressive Gaming International (the assets of which ultimately were acquired by IGT).

Next was Acres Gaming, and another transformative technology, bonusing, within the system known then as Acres Advantage, now the IGT Advantage casino management system, after the supplier’s 2003 acquisition of the Acres Gaming assets.

According to Acres, the ensuing 18 years saw slot system technology pretty much on pause. He has stressed to anyone who will listen that casinos are basing their loyalty programs on technology that was created in the 1990s.

“The best analogy I can give you is that today’s casinos are operated like Blockbuster video stores,” Acres says.

“Everybody wakes up every morning, thinking about how to arrange the cassettes on the shelf, how many late fees they’re going to collect and where to put the licorice next to the checkout stand. And this is the age of Netflix.

You’ve got to think about what the players you have want—but more importantly, what do the people who aren’t yet your players want? What do you have to give to get that new business?

“The casino management systems that people are using today are just too old and too weak to be able to

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do the things that today’s consumers expect. Our games are too simple. Our loyalty programs are too simple, too much oriented towards entitlements. We can’t make any rapid changes in our technology and our offerings. And so, our industry has run tired. Our costs are too high and our revenues are too low.”

Acres is addressing the challenges of modern loyalty systems as CEO of his latest company, Acres Manufacturing, along with son Noah Acres, the company’s chief operating officer. The company is currently preparing for an initial public offering that will occur in the coming weeks, proceeds to be used to expand the company and to maximize the benefits of the product Acres says will effectively address the problem of the antiquated CMS, a system called Foundation.

Foundation is not a traditional casino management system, but a technology that super-charges any existing system by collecting data directly from each slot machine—according to Acres, 1,000 times the data collected by a traditional CMS, a richness of data that frees slot officials to court, reward and retain players in ways they’ve never done before.

“The casino systems we have today are closed,” says Acres. “They’re proprietary. The system supplier refuses to allow you to share your own data with third-party vendors. With Foundation, just about all the data is shareable. And we think that revenues will rise because of that.”

Direct Data Access “We call it a GMI, which stands for gaming machine interface,” explains Noah Acres. “You plug this directly into the slot machine and it extracts all of the SAS data in real time. Every single event, every meter that’s reported on the game, comes across this in real time. And we present it to the casino in the manner where they now control and own the data in the way that they want.

“This is really big in terms of learning player behaviors, and adjusting to player behaviors in real time. And this can can actually write credits directly back to the game.”

One of the advantages of this last fact is that Foundation is a perfect system addition for adding cashless functionality, as Penn National is currently doing using Foundation in combination with systems from both Everi and Scientific Games at some of its properties nationwide, using the Acres Wallet cashless module to transfer funds brought in from outside sources by the CMS and translate them instantly into credits on the player’s machine.

But it’s also perfect for rewarding bonuses that are precisely the right player perk at precisely the right time. John Acres notes that Foundation records not only how much people are wagering, but the manner in which they’re wagering. “We can record how long people pause between button presses—whether they started with $100 or $10, what their credit meter balance is,” he says. “We’ve got a very rich data set, and we have that data in real time.”

The other benefit is the freedom the operator has to use that data in a way not possible with traditional proprietary systems that control the disbursement of data and shut out other systems. “The data is free to the casino to use in any way they want,” says John Acres. “There are all kinds of third parties out there with lots of capability for analytics and decision-making that are unable to couple to the existing CMS systems in ways that can bring brand new capabilities, brand new profits to casinos if they can utilize this data.

“We’re providing the bridge through which they can access that casino data, as well as the building block upon which they can build cashless functionality.”

He adds that the ways of drilling down this data to benefit the player/operator relationship are practically endless. For instance, Foundation can merge data on the credit meter balance with the time between wagers—“whether or not you’re slowing down your wagers or speeding up, whether or not you’re

increasing or decreasing your wagers,” John Acres says.

“With those hints, we can start to ascertain what your satisfaction level is. Are you becoming tired of the experience? Are you disengaging? And if we can time a bonus or a challenge to you at that exact moment of discouragement, when you would otherwise get up and leave, we can transform the gaming experience.”

“It’s more than just the segment of data that we gather,” adds Noah Acres. “It’s also the real-time nature of it. If I go to the casino today and I sit down and I play, the casino has no way of monitoring my experience in real time. Therefore they, they have no way of adjusting or modifying my experience.

“We collect everything in real time, giving the casino the ability to see if the player is having a good experience, a bad experience—perhaps, even, if an experience is going to jeopardize the person’s loyalty. (The operator) can then jump in and respond with either a bonus, a message or some type of incentive or personalized communication.”

It’s the kind of personalized experience to which customers—particularly younger customers—have become accustomed thanks to the internet.

“The success of the internet cannot be ignored,” John Acres says. “The combined revenues of Facebook, Google and Netflix are 48,000 times bigger than 20 years ago. Gaming industry revenues have increased by a factor of 2, just barely keeping pace with inflation. Why is the rest of the world exploding while we’re thrilled to death to have a 20 percent increase in one year?

It’s because of personalization, mobile interactions and social connectivity.

These are all facets the gaming industry has ignored.”

He says Foundation and the technology coming behind it is all about “resetting expectations” among operators. “It’s about getting casinos to realize that it’s way better if we all take a smaller share of a giant pie than the majority share of a little tiny pie. That’s the difference between open and proprietary. Open has worked in every industry it has been brought to, and we’re really excited about bringing it to casinos.”

Changing the Game Beyond changing the way casinos marshal all the data that could be at their fingertips, Acres Gaming is looking to change the slot experience to better fit the emerging younger player demographic.

“We’re stuck in the same basic game platform we’ve had in the 50 years since I’ve been in the business, which is basically spinning reels that spin and stop, and you win or you lose,” John Acres says. “Our next step beyond Foundation is what we call Coherence. That’s where we create an entirely new gaming machine.”

He says this new machine will have no bill acceptor or ticket printer, and will be built from scratch for cashless play only. “But it also will combine the loyalty information with the random number generator at the same time,” he says.

“So, when you sit down at the game in our vision of the future, you’re going to hold your palm up against the machine. It will recognize who you are, your funds will transfer, and the game that you see will change to match your personality.”

Acres says this will apply regardless of the casino you’re in, as long as it is equipped with Coherence. “You’ll go to any box anywhere in the casino, sit down, hold your palm in front of it, and you’ll see the game of your preference, the game that we believe is most likely to fit you.”

He adds that Coherence will fit the mobile, social media world in which today’s consumers exist, with opportunities for side wagers and other interactions with players you know, instant replays of your wins on social media, or even to identify someone across the casino who is winning and wager on FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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“

When you sit down at the game in our vision of the future, you’re going to hold your palm up against the machine. It will recognize who you are, your funds will transfer, and the game that you see will change to match your personality.

”

—John Acres, Chief Executive Officer, Acres Manufacturing

ability to maximize casino revenues in today’s industry, says Noah Acres.

“When you think about real-time rewards and real-time messaging,” he says, “to understand the scope and the potential here, imagine you’re a casino marketer. You know every player’s specific play history, you know how they’re faring on the game right now, and you also know how much money they have in their pocket, because you know the wallet balance on their mobile device.

“If you can know all that information, there’s a tremendous potential to deliver that person the right message at the right time, to get them to take the right action. It’s going generate more profit for the casino.”

Moving Forward

their game.

“We believe that with those rich new opportunities, we can attract new players,” says John Acres. “A lot of those new players will be younger, but I know a lot of my friends find casino slot machines very boring as well. I think this will attract people across all demographics.”

Acres’ plan is to do no less than transform the casino experience. “If I walk into a casino today, it’s like reading an article that’s written in all caps with exclamation marks after every sentence,” says John Acres. “It’s just so overwhelming and confusing, and there’s no choreographic experience for the player. It’s flat. There needs to be this undulation, this roller-coaster ride of quiet and excitement and quiet and excitement.”

“And at the end of your budget,” adds Noah Acres, “at the end of your time in the casino, we want you to be satisfied. We want you to go home thinking about how fun it was to win that $100, and maybe not thinking about the $200 you spent to get there. That’s our goal. And we believe that to get there, we need this new platform, and then that platform needs to be open to everybody.”

“They did $600 billion in (sales through) the App Store this year,” says the elder Acres. “We can bring that to the casino. We can have all these bright people that are sitting at home with ideas express themselves on this new platform, and they’ll win or lose, they’ll succeed or fail based upon how well their content is accepted. Many will fail, but those who succeed will completely transform the experiences that we have.

“And keep in mind that if you want the old experience, you can still have it, because Foundation provides the bridge between the old games and the new games.”

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The means to generate that profit is still in its infancy as far as the Foundation technology, but John Acres says it will move forward as some of the industry’s more visionary operators see how it can change the casino ecosystem.

There has been pushback, including litigation involving some of the more traditional system providers. “The biggest issue isn’t so much pushback; it’s the inertia to change,” John Acres says. “There are many people that want to keep things the way that they were yesterday. They want to do, tomorrow, what they did last week.”

He says the more positive future for technology like Foundation will be realized by operators like Acres’ current partner Penn National Gaming.

“Penn is an example of how a really visionary guy, (CEO) Jay Snowden, and a great team of people are adapting to change very quickly,” he says. “And other people are starting to see that example of what benefits change can bring. So we’re real excited about 2022 and 2023.

“We think that a whole new era is upon us. We think that we can double casino revenues. We think we can cut costs per dollar of revenue in half. We think that we can totally transform, in the next five years, the casino gaming industry.”

He adds that this does not mean Foundation is going to replace the traditional casino management systems; the technology can improve what already exists.

“Foundation is literally what its name implies—it is the bedrock upon which we build,” says Noah Acres. “It collects the data. Now we will create applications that replace every function of a CMS, but we also invite any third party to do a better job than what we do. We’re open to creativity.”

“But besides personalization for the players and creating a more challenging, interactive game,” adds John Acres, “the big challenge for casinos now is to move from the desktop era where the existing casino management systems are stuck—where a host or other casino person has to run into a back room

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“

Foundation is literally what its name implies—it is the bedrock upon which we build.

It collects the data. Now we will create applications that replace every function of a CMS, but we also invite any third party to do a better job than what we do.

We’re open to creativity.

”

—Noah Acres, Chief Operating Officer, Acres Manufacturing

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and get onto a desktop computer to get information, and then go back out and please the player—to where that information is inherently presented on a mobile device to the person in the moment, not just something they have to dig out and think about.”

He adds that Foundation is capable of calculating the best course of action related to that information, and lay out the best actions for that host to take. “All of that information about the player is automatically ingested, automatically calculated,” he says, “and the things that that host or service person should do for the player are laid out for them on the smartphone. It tells them what to do next.”

For Acres Manufacturing, what to do next is to educate operators on the potential benefits of the Foundation technology and what will follow in the next few years. John Acres—who was inducted into the AGA Gaming Hall of Fame in 2016 and has, so far, 149 patents to his name—is relying on the partnership with his son Noah to move the technology forward.

“I can provide the experience of where the bottlenecks are going to be. From my experience with EDT and Mikohn and Acres Gaming, I’ve got some better insights as to what the stumbling blocks down the road might be and how we can work to avoid those before we ever get there,” John Acres says. “Noah, on the other hand, brings that new energy, that new look at things... I never participated in social media, so he’s dragging me kicking and screaming into it, but it’s natural for him.”

He’ll soon have a lot more help, as this year’s IPO—expected to raise as much as $60 million—will mean expansion for Acres Manufacturing. “We’re on track (with the IPO),” John Acres says. “We’re going to use the proceeds to build Coherence, and to further our patent portfolio, which we fully expect to quadruple over the next four or five years, and to hire great people—because technology is just what people use to create the player experience. We need people who will continue to evolve with that technology.

“We want to make sure that Foundation and Coherence feed into that when that becomes the norm. We don’t want to be stuck in a world where the machines that we build today look an awful lot like the machines of 20 years ago. We’ve got to go where the rest of the world already is, or we’re just going to disappear.”

For now, Acres Manufacturing is working with Penn National to bring cashless game functionality to what eventually will be all of Penn’s properties. “I believe we’re installed on around 15,000 machines so far, and we’ll probably equip 20,000 machines this year and 100,000 next year,” John Acres says. “But you won’t see those big examples until we get a significant installed base, and until we get all the regulations in place.

“So, we’re still on the runway ready to take off. But you’ll see us in the air next year.”

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MAKING MY POINT

Silver Screen Gems If the Bible doesn’t do it for you, you might consider these infamous quotes

S

ome can cite chapter and verse from the (in the) beginning of Genesis to the (seventh and) final sign of Revelation, not to mention every single psalm and beatitude in between. Others still have memorized each and every element on the periodic table, and there has to be, what, at least a dozen of them? And then there are those among us—modern-major-generals, mostly— that know the kings of England and quote the fights historical, from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

But for every one of those, you’ll find a thousand of these: People who can lip-sync all three Godfather films and every episode of Seinfeld.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Because many of life’s lessons lay outside the Good Book or the hard sciences or the high art of musical theater. The screen, be it big or small, has served its share of gospel truths over the years, quotes and quips that offer insight and direction to your own life and your own career.

You know, like these: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

—Chief Brody, Jaws Yeppers, we’ve all had this feeling. Maybe not of coming near nose-to-nose with a Carcharodon carcharias—it’s a great white—but of realizing in the clap of an instant we are woefully outgunned. Could be a board meeting where the person speaking is a cross between Chris Rock and Steve Jobs… and you’re on deck. Could be a job interview where everyone else is an MBA from Penn State and you’re a GED from the state pen.

Or could be at a trade show in Las Vegas about 20 years ago when you wander into a competitor’s booth and realize your new slot isn’t as hot to trot as you had thought.

True story.

There’s only one way to deal with this situation, and that’s to avoid it altogether. Conduct your diligence ahead of time and learn

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By Roger Snow

exactly what you are getting yourself into before you get into it. Or step into it. As Charlie Sheen said in Wall Street—speaking of movies—quoting Sun Tzu: “Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.”

“You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself?”

—Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs

This is for all the vampires out there. You know, the ones that cannot see their own reflections in “Change calls the tune we dance to.” the mirror. Of course, irony being what it is, it —Al Swearengen, Deadwood seems those folks least capable of identifyAs fans of this HBO ing their own inadequacies are expert Better you show would know, at finding them in others, no matsee your own it wasn’t easy ter how microscopic. weaknesses and finding a quote If you take something as shore them up from this particuthe North Star for your career, before others lar character that take this.

Always look inward. Becrucify you didn’t include a 10come the toughest critic of your flaws for them. letter word ending and your blind spots. Let’s be honest: with –ucker (think pretty much everyone is talking a little smack about it). But this simple message, delivered stobehind your back. Better you see your own weakically, calmly, matter-of-factly while pouring himnesses and shore them up before others crucify self a coffee, rings louder than any daisy chain of you for them. polysyllabic vulgarities ever could.

“I am the one who knocks.”

Change simply does not care what you need —Walter White, Breaking Bad or what you want. It does what it does when it wants to do it. You? You’re just along for the ride.

Yeah, well sometimes you’ve just gotta kick a little Look no further back than the last two years. Like, ass. Leadership indeed comes in many flavors, who saw this $#%@ coming? But just because from democratic to autocratic to every cratic in something can’t be predicted—pandemic, ecobetween, but wishy-washy-cratic sure as hell ain’t nomic shutdown, supply-chain chaos—doesn’t on the menu. mean it can’t be negotiated. See it early. Don’t Be decisive and be bold. And if you’re wrong? wait for it to overwhelm you. React and attack.

Brush it off and jump back into the breech. People respect that. They want to be part of it. Yes, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.” even in crisis. Nobody, or at least nobody you’d —Jessica Rabbit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit choose for your team, wants to curl up in the fetal It’s hard not to judge a book by its cover. How position and hope whatever menace they’re facing else are you going to judge it, by actually reading passes them by. Rather, they want steer directly it? Well duh, who has time for that? As author into it and duke it out.

Malcolm Gladwell—he of the 10,000 hours fame And as true leaders, you can’t be afraid to get and the Garfunkel hairdo infamy—pointed out your hands a little dirty—or a little bloody— in his best-seller, Blink: Humans are biologically along the way. conditioned to make impressions in an instant, and those impression are unlikely to change.

Roger Snow is a senior vice president with Scientific And they tend to be right.

Games. The views and opinions expressed in this Master the art of the first impression. Present article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Scientific Games yourself in a way that’s approachable, likeable, Corporation or its affiliates. positive and enthusiastic.

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PANIC

Marketing While you have to keep an eye on your competition, reacting to every marketing program is not wise and can be counterproductive

By Julia Carcamo

S

uppose you were a physician. A patient comes to you with symptoms. He has done what he assumes is the requisite WebMD and Google search and has determined his diagnosis: he needs an operation today. You clear your schedule and immediately operate.

Sounds ludicrous?

Suppose you were part of a Monday morning executive team briefing. A fellow executive saw a business run a popular marketing program, bringing record foot traffic over the weekend. A line of cars snaked their way to the parking lot for hours. He declares, “We need to copy that this weekend.” You leave the meeting and clear your schedule to create the same promotion.

Everything is on hold until you can get this out to the public. You get your team and agency to stop all projects and refocus on this one thing.

Sounds ridiculous? Probably. Sounds a little too real? More than likely.

Unfortunately, this type of panic marketing is the reality at many casinos.

Unless we recognize and plan to combat it, panic marketing can run rampant in our marketing departments.

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dustry? As the name implies, it is marketing to quickly react to an external force or to leverage the latest trend.

Panic marketing has good intentions—to counteract a disaster of some sort—which is why it can be so insidious. Worse yet, we can often justify panic marketing as a means to “loyalize” customers—something that does not happen through marketing in and of itself.

Have you ever sent out a direct mail piece because your competitor dropped a very generous offer?

Have you ever matched tiers or offers to counteract what the competition was doing?

Have you ever reached the near end of a month and saw your revenue way behind projections and then dropped a supplemental in the mail in the hopes of stimulating an additional visit even though there were still active offers in the market?

Any of these types of reactive efforts could be the right thing to do, but only if they are done with the right intentions and with the appropriate analysis.

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Successful marketing programs have a reliable foundation (such as the marketing calendar) but also the ability to be responsive and agile.

This means programs can change, but they do so according to strategy, even when we are a little panicked.

Panic Triggers Two of the biggest triggers for panic marketing are the P&L and competition.

There are also cases where disruptions as drastic as a pandemic or hurricane or as innocuous as road construction can trigger panic marketing. Additionally, shiny object syndrome can also be a cause.

As executives, we are very aware of how our financials can have a ripple effect. A penny difference in missing or exceeding investor expectations can have an enormous impact on the stock. And while Wall Street may be obsessed with quarter-over-quarter results, internally, some of us obsess on a weekly (sometimes daily) level, and that can have us spiraling into tactics that are not right for us in the long run.

If a new competitor enters the market or an existing one is doing something new or well, we feel the pain of their success. There is a reason strengths and threats (as well as opportunities and weaknesses) are opposite each other on the ubiquitous SWOT analysis.

When a competitor beats us, we scramble to copy them (even unintentionally) or meet them at their challenge. How often have we been “advised” to adjust the reinvestment matrix to keep up? How often have we purchased ad space because one person would see it or “recommend” it? This has happened to all of us.

Natural disasters and even road construction can send us into panic marketing mode. We become more aggressive with offers or ramp up our presence in communications channels.

We see trends and tools, attend conferences, or meet charismatic people who can flip our marketing around because we worry that we may miss out on something. I have seen marketers completely abandon their marketing calendars to implement something new that someone is convinced will change everything rather than waste time taking a measured test-and-control approach. We are almost all guilty of falling victim to shiny object syndrome in some way or another.

Panic marketing can also cause us to cut costs and tighten our belts in ways that may damage our business in the long run. I did not argue these cuts as we all simultaneously had to shut down our businesses. Still, I have argued with a general manager that chose to tighten his proverbial belt when a competitor came to town. Rather than maintain a presence in the mind of customers, he opted to cede his share of voice because “he couldn’t compete.”

These triggers share a root cause: there is no real vision or strategy for the

brand or growth, or because the marketing team does not have a real seat at the table (even if someone is occupying a chair).

Even if some instances of panic marketing appear successful, they can have detrimental long-term effects on the business.

This type of marketing can erode retention and job satisfaction. No one likes constantly shifting gears, the state of chaos panic marketing creates, or frankly, taking the last position in the market just because we gave up. Moreover, panic marketing causes the executive team to experience frustration and lose confidence in the marketing team itself.

An organization mired in panic marketing will never hit its goals because the panic does not allow you to see things with balance. Sure, you may create visits and traffic, but at what cost to the experience or budget?

Additionally, you never have time to appreciate a long-lasting success.

Panic marketing can also erode your brand. Moving too quickly can create disconnected messaging that loses resonance with your target audience and, more importantly, team members. I will always say if you do not lay claim to your brand voice, someone else will take it.

Panic to Agile Marketing efforts need to be grounded in strategy and purpose in order to map the way forward. Successful marketing programs have a reliable foundation (such as the marketing calendar) but also the ability to be responsive and agile. This means programs can change, but they do so according to strategy, even when we are a little panicked.

The first step is to ensure you can make the right decisions. That entails understanding the underlying business challenge. This type of approach can apply to every aspect of marketing, even advertising. If you look back at creative jobs that have gone over three or four revisions, I can guarantee that you will discover an underlying business challenge that was never communicated.

Then, when presented with a tactic that could upend your strategic plans, you will need to analyze why and how the tactic may be working for others.

• Step into their shoes and ask why they are utilizing the tactic. Keep asking why until you can uncover the root cause.

• Then understand if and how it might work for you. Usually, copying FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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Research and two-way conversations should be cornerstones of our marketing planning process. Without input from the customer, our plans are nothing more than classroom exercises in theory. We hope they will result in our goals, but it makes for guesswork rather than projections.

tactics exactly is never the right fit. In truth, it might be a tactic that, with a few adjustments, fits perfectly into your strategy.

If you are presented with the latest and greatest tool or channel, you have to ask the same sorts of questions and a few more.

• Does this tool help us to reach our strategic goals?

• Do our customers respond to the new tool/channel in question?

• Will this enhance our efforts?

• How hard is it to implement and manage this new tool/channel, and what will we have to give up? And frankly, are you willing to give something up?

• Do you have the right resources for this to work?

• Can you afford it?

If you are attempting to counteract some sort of disruption in your business, we must, as good marketers, balance the expenses against a loss of revenue. However, that is not the only guidepost for our efforts. Disruptions may be painful but short-lived. A customer’s loyalty needs to be held in respect even through these times. So, when you are making reactive changes, you want to consider the impact you are making on your best and target customers.

What If You Do Not Like The Answers?

There are times when these questions do not give us the answers we (or our bosses and clients) want to hear. We must build the case for either continuing down the planned path or adjusting without the ideas brought to us.

Don’t be afraid to say, no, but be prepared to remind some of the goals and strategy as well as provide a validation that they are still applicable given any market or environmental changes.

Suppose an assessment of the current strategy and a review of your marketing programs show results falling short of expectations. In that case, it does not necessarily mean you need to go into panic mode, but rather that you need to find the real issues and solve for those. As long as you and your team have a solid strategy that is aligned with your goals and you continue to ask why, panic marketing is easy to overcome.

Competition Can Make Us Better That is not to say we cannot draw inspiration from the competition or other businesses. As a former boss of mine once said, “competition makes us better.” So, what might start as panic marketing can evolve and make you more agile.

You could end up with an opportunity that is right for your brand, strategy, and audience.

Continually look at other marketing programs—in and out of the casino industry—and ask yourself if they could be modified to fit your

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strategy and if you can execute those programs properly.

Examine shiny objects, tools and programs closely. You may find ways that will help you rather than distract you.

Keep From Panic Marketing In The Future Although marketers may inevitably experience panic marketing, there are ways to limit it.

Internalize the brand. Solid and lasting brands are successful not because of brilliant ad campaigns and exquisite logo design. They last and succeed because the brand filters everything they do, both customer-facing and back of the house. Moreover, there is an understanding of a higher purpose that team members and stakeholders believe in and support in all their actions.

Always keep your customer (and target audience) at the center of everything you do. For many, the audience has shifted once during the pandemic and then again as we added new offerings such as sports betting and online gaming. Many businesses, including casino operations, have adjusted their buyer personas to understand better how their offerings fit into these new and evolved lives.

Research and two-way conversations should be cornerstones of our marketing planning process. Without input from the customer, our plans are nothing more than classroom exercises in theory. We hope they will result in our goals, but it makes for guesswork rather than projections.

Allow room to be creative and to think differently. Marketing is a balance of art and science. So, while some things need to anchor us in reality, there is nothing that prevents us from being creative in our marketing and offerings except maybe a marketing plan engraved in stone. I’ve yet to see one of those.

Monitor key performance indicators. Not all indicators are created equal, nor are they all related to achieving your overall business goals. Understanding which indicators are pointing the way to success and which are merely adding to the landscape is essential.

Grow your team and your skill set. Customers and marketing are changing faster than we could have ever imagined, and there is no slowdown in sight. Therefore, it becomes even more critical that our teams keep up with shifts and adapt programs accordingly.

Make it a habit to regularly review your strategy and marketing plans, because if they cannot live and breathe, neither can your brand.

Julia Carcamo is the chief brand strategist at J Carcamo & Associates consultancy. She has held leadership positions at the property and corporate levels at medium to large casino companies. Contact her at Julia@jcarcamoassociates.com.

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EXIT INTERVIEW: Marcus Prater,

Executive Director, Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers

M

arcus Prater is retiring after 14 years as executive director at the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers. During his tenure, he brought renewed focus on the importance of the equipment used in the gaming industry and how the revenue achieved by the operators is largely dependent upon the games, tables and technology provided by AGEM members. He recounts the high points of his leadership and why he believes AGEM will continue to grow under the incoming executive director, Daron Dorsey. He spoke with GGB Publisher Roger Gros at the GGB offices in Boulder City, Nevada in January. To hear a full podcast of this interview, visit GGBMagazine.com.

GGB: Congratulations for completing 14 years at the helm of AGEM. Prior to your arrival, AGEM was kind of directionless. What did you do to get them on the right path, with the guidance of the board of directors, of course?

Marcus Prater: If you go back to the beginning of my time, which was

March 2008, I thought during my years at Bally that AGEM had much potential to do a lot of great things. The executive director at the time was a nice enough fellow, but I had a vision of what AGEM could be, and it started with the growth in the membership.

IGT was dominating at the time, but its chairman Chuck Mathewson brought together all the domestic U.S. slot companies as founding members—IGT, Bally, WMS and Aristocrat. We had at the time only 32 members and none from outside the U.S. Even then the gaming industry was global, and it’s even more so now. All of these manufacturers were showing up at trade shows in Macau and London and Buenos Aires and Las Vegas. So to ignore the global aspect of the industry was not the right thing to do.

And so I went out and started using the contacts I had from my Bally days to convince different companies to join. Novomatic obviously with its dominance in Europe at the time was the most significant. Jens Halle, who headed up Novomatic at the time, was skeptical. Everyone thought that “A” in AGEM stood for American, which was not true then or now. But getting Novomatic to join as a Gold member, at the same level appropriately as IGT, Bally and the others, the membership growth really took off from there. At our peak, we had 190 members in March 2021, from 22 different countries.

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The reality is our influence has grown, and our ability to have a seat at the table in every regulated jurisdiction in the world has improved dramatically.

So when you grow like that, it brings a perspective from all over the world.

Right now we have 171 members. We lost a few during the pandemic.

With the rise of iGaming, sports betting and fintech, are you getting a boost in your membership from those segments?

Yes, it’s blurring obviously where the IGTs and Sci Games are happily making their slot machines, but they’re also providing the sports betting engines that these operators are using. And then you start to throw in the fintech side of cashless and payment processing and it’s an exciting time.

AGEM also partners with other organizations—for example, the AGA where you’re focusing on the illegal slot games, sometimes called skill games. How’s that effort going?

We’ve made more progress, frankly, in the last few months than we have in the last year. We announced a campaign some two years ago. The AGEM board was frustrated at the spread of these so-called skill games in Pennsylvania, Missouri and Virginia in particular. I knew then and I know now that

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trying to stop the spread of these games is very difficult and that stamping them out is virtually impossible. We’re putting a spotlight on the problem wherever we can whenever we can. And, in the last couple months, we, AGEM and the AGA, submitted letters to the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a public comment period on the Gambling Devices Act of 1962, which requires all gambling device companies to register with the DOJ. And I guarantee you these shady companies producing these machines are not adhering to that law. We took the opportunity to address that and call out some of the specific companies by name so that DOJ could go check to see if they’re following the law.

You keep your members up to date on what’s happening in jurisdictions around the world, whether it be regulations, legislation or technical standards. How do you track these changes?

As I reflect on my time, I would say that certainly that is one of the most important things we did. It’s not just me who has done all this. We have people like Tracy Cohen, who’s our director of Europe, Connie Jones, our director of responsible gaming. And of course the officers who are the executives at the member companies. It was difficult for suppliers to get a seat at the table.

If you go back to when AGEM began in 2000, I do feel like these suppliers were always treated like second-class citizens.

The operators and the regulators were driving the bus on everything.

They said to the suppliers, you’ll get your turn someday. But the reality is our influence has grown, and our ability to have a seat at the table in every regulated jurisdiction in the world has improved dramatically. And there are examples like Mexico. It’s been very frustrating, but the only constant with Mexico and the regulatory body SEGOB has been AGEM. The government officials and regulators turned over several times—staff and directors. We are still there trying to make a decent-to-very-good market. It has the potential to be very good.

We have a seat at the table with what’s happening in Japan. We just scored a major victory in Pennsylvania where we’ve been working on this issue where certain game types were being rejected by Pennsylvania’s lab. We worked on this for two and a half years. I have to give a shout out to Kevin O’Toole as the executive director of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

He sent us a letter in December that thanked us for showing him the light of how to be flexible when it comes right to slot standards and slot regulations.

The AGA and AGEM come together to address important issues. One of the recent presidents of the AGA suggested that AGEM be dissolved and its members just become part of the AGA. That didn’t come to pass, but why wasn’t it considered?

I think that we each have different missions, for one. The AGA was founded with the idea of federal issues with a Washington, D.C.-based organization, focused really on federal issues. For many years they wanted nothing to do with state issues. Well, these state issues are very important to our members when it comes to issues like regulations and the expansion of gaming. These suppliers are an important resource that’s making the global gaming industry what it is today.

There are companies that are members of both AGEM and AGA, and they can participate in different pursuits like the Wire Act, a federal issue where both the AGA and AGEM weighed in. And of course we’re partners with G2E. I think we got very lucky with the timing this year, and with the little break in the pandemic, the show was considered a success. AGEM gets a percentage of the revenue for our operations.

And just in the last few years the chairman of the AGA was a supplier with Gavin Isaacs and Trevor Croker. So they obviously recognize the leadership that these executives bring.

Yes, they bring that to the table as well. Like in other audiences, it was a bit of a slow slog to get there, but we’re there now.

AGEM is known for being very generous to charities, educational institutions and efforts, and conference sponsorships. How do you decide who is worthy of AGEM donations?

We have a mission statement that essentially mandates, in my opinion, that we focus on responsible gaming and education in particular. I think we have an obligation on the responsible gaming side as the gaming industry has grown so much globally. In some cases, the dedication to responsible gaming became an afterthought. And so it’s our job and it’s the right thing to do to support the handful of very effective and prominent responsible gaming organizations that deserve our support.

When you look at an organization like the Problem Gambling Center in Las Vegas, that’s a treatment facility that would struggle without our support. And then, you have the International Center For Responsible Gaming, which is more of a research group, and then you have the National Council For Problem Gambling, which is an educational group. They all have different missions. They all work together for a common goal.

Education’s the same. We’ve funded a whole series of scholarships with our contributions. Our signature contribution is a new building for the School of Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. That’s a seed that you plant. And then it pays off because we need engineers.

Your big contribution to the ICRG is the golf tournament held every year. And you’ve been doing that for more than 20 years now. That’s a great event and everybody loves it, and we were able to do it at the end of September this year.

We’ve raised over $2.2 million. It’s a great industry event for a good cause.

The reality is that it goes to really good work that we need to focus on as an industry.

You’ve got an exciting year coming up for AGEM. Your replacement is going to be taking over in the beginning of March, and AGEM will have a new office at some point this year. How do you think the transition is going to work?

I’ll be somewhat of a lame duck for a little bit. My contract expires at the end of February 28 by design. The board did an extensive search, and Daron Dorsey, who was the general counsel for Ainsworth and has been an officer of AGEM for five years, was selected. He is a great candidate because of his institutional knowledge of what AGEM has done. He’ll start March 1 and we will move into the Black Fire Innovation Lab, which is at the UNLV Harry Reid Research and Technology Park. It’s going to be a great location for AGEM; the energy in that building is palpable.

There are lots of good things coming up for AGEM. Can you pinpoint one accomplishment that you’re most proud of during your time with AGEM?

It’s not really one. It’s the big picture; it’s the seat at the table. We had to scrap and fight for our rightful place in this industry. I’m not discounting the brick-and-mortar facilities and the money that these palaces on the Strip and in Macau and around the country, around the world, bring in. These casino operators spend a fortune to get into the market.

But at the end of the day, the revenues are being generated for the most part by our machines, our tables and our technology. This has been a passion of mine. And again, I’m not taking sole credit for all this for just myself, but I was helping to drive this because I felt passionate about it. And I think the proof is in the pudding in terms of where we were in the early 2000s to where we are now.

FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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EMERGING LEADERS Homeward Bound Heather Lee Lommori Sales Director, Engaged Nation eather Lee Lommori was so averse to the idea of working from home when Covid-19 forced a shutdown everywhere, she resisted at first.

But the director of sales for Engaged Nation got with the program and it was like tasting a recipe you refused to try for years and wondering what took so long.

“Working from home was one of those ‘you don’t know what you’re missing’ kind of experiences,” says Lommori, a native Nevadan, born and raised in Reno. “I didn’t think I would like it, but this has been such a wonderful transition for me. Now I love it and couldn’t imagine going back to an office every day.”

A criminal justice and psychology major at the University of Nevada, Reno, Lommori wanted to be in law enforcement, something at the federal level.

“However, during my first year of grad school, I became a single mom during challenging economic times and had to leave the program to work full-time,” she says.

She took a job at bank and a second waiting tables. A gaming job came almost by accident. “I applied for a sales position at Atrient before I knew what it was or what I would be selling.”

Call it love at first sight. She knew the gaming industry was where she belonged. Seeking to advance her career, Lommori applied for an open sales director position at Engaged Nation.

“I was attracted to the company culture. I loved their philosophy of being more than a vendor to casinos and how they embraced the role of being good partners.”

It’s a philosophy Lommori tries to embody. “It’s been a great fit so far.”

At Engaged Nation, Lommori handles sales, promotions, email and text services nationwide.

“I am involved in all phases of the sale, from lead generation to contract negotiation,” she says. “I also assist with the planning and execution of trade shows.”

While Covid has had its ups and downs for Lommori, she’s focused on the positive. For one thing, she got to return to Reno, which turned out to be a godsend to Lommori and her family.

You might say Covid was just another obstacle to overcome.

“I am a firm believer in prayer and meditation, so I lean heavily on these practices for guidance and perspective,” says Lommori, who relaxes by meditating and exercising.

Lommori has also relied on colleagues for advice during her journey, those who have been there and helped her work through the challenges.

“Angela Ahmet, senior vice president, was my boss at Atrient, and then at Everi after the acquisition. She taught me about gaming and encouraged me to join Global Gaming Women. She groomed me into who I am today,” she says.

Mick Ingersoll, vice president, sales operations at Everi, was not only a colleague but a close friend.

“He has pushed me to exceed and be the best version of myself at every stage of my career,” she explains. “I owe him much of this accomplishment.”

If she could meet her younger self after all these years, she’d tell her, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.

And enjoy the ride. Gaming is a fun and exciting industry. Don’t lose sight of that.”

—Bill Sokolic

H

“Gaming is a fun and exciting industry.

Don’t lose sight of that.”

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Real Estate to Gaming Michael Peacock Associate, DLA Piper s a kid growing up in Absecon, New Jersey, Mike Peacock dreamed of being a diplomat or an ambassador, something in the foreign service.

To chase those childhood dreams, he majored in international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. “But my sights were set on being a lawyer,” he says. “It’s a good interdisciplinary major. It was interesting and served me well.”

While an undergrad, Peacock did a semester internship in Washington, working at NASA, of all places. He worked in the history and archives department.

“I met astronauts and dealt with Freedom of Information Act requests about whether the moon landing was fake. I gained a lot of historical knowledge. It was cool,” he says.

Peacock graduated from Rutgers School of Law and got his first taste of the legal system in Atlantic County, New Jersey working as a paralegal and summer associate at Cooper Levenson.

When he finished law school, Peacock joined Nehmad, Perillo & Davis in Atlantic City, where he spent more than a half dozen years focused on real estate planning, zoning and development law.

“But casinos and gaming were always in the background,” he says. In 2018, he signed with Fox Rothschild working on gaming law. And almost two years later he moved over to DLA Piper, also practicing gaming law.

The Supreme Court decision that overturned the ban on sports betting in 2018 opened the door

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Moving iGaming Law Brandt Iden Head of U.S. Government Affairs, Sportradar randt Iden brought uncommon perspective to his panel last month at the Winter Meeting of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States (NCLGS). There representing Sportradar as its head of U.S. government affairs, Iden came to that position and the gaming industry after serving in Michigan’s House of Representatives from 2014 to 2020.

During his legislative tenure, Iden served as chairman of the Regulatory Reform and Ways & Means Committees, and was named one of Michigan’s “50 Names to Know in Government” by Crain’s Detroit Business. Although, what he is best known for, and what led him to the business side of gaming, is serving as the architect and lead sponsor of Michigan’s Lawful Internet Gaming Act— the legislation which paved the way for legalized online gaming, sports betting, advanced deposit wagering for parimutuel racing and fantasy sports contests in the state. Notably, this legislation regulates online gaming for both commercial and tribal operators, a unique feat in today’s gaming landscape.

Looking back, Iden admits he had no idea what he was getting into.

“I saw revenue opportunities, had an interest in new approaches to player protection, and, frankly, I am a gambler; but I did not realize how hard it was actually going to be to get this done,” he says.

The diverse set of stakeholders and paradigms presented interesting challenges. However, in the end, he did get it done. And in 2018, his bill made it to then-Governor Rick Snyder for signature, only to be vetoed in the final days of the legislative session.

“That was a major blow,” says Iden. But, as the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Iden was forced to start all over, educating a new set of legislators and a new governor about the opportunities and safeguards of online gaming. There were plenty of days where he felt like negotiations weren’t going anywhere, but, “ultimately we crafted better legislation,” he says, “and passed the bill with a large, bipartisan majority. That was a great feeling on the heels of our first loss, only a year earlier.”

Over those four to five years of policymaking, Iden realized he had a real passion for the industry. He found great mentors in Nick Menas of The StarsGroup at the time (now with Seminole Hard Rock Digital), who brought him a lingering iGaming bill from the Michigan Senate when he became chairman of the House Regulatory Reform Committee, and Mike Neubecker, then president and COO of MGM Detroit, who walked him through all the economics of the industry and helped him to understand the impacts of varying tax rates.

The recent surge in legalized sports wagering coincided with Iden’s move to Sportradar, where he has spent his time at the forefront of states with enabling legislation. He’s excited to see this dovetailing with other developments like cashless wagering, iCasinos and conversations around blockchain technology.

“This is the work that will pave the way for the future of our industry,” he says. “It’s not just about crafting legislation that makes sense for today; we have to build it for tomorrow.”

As he looks ahead, Iden is enthusiastic about the industry’s current focus on diversity and technology, both issues he feels will be critical to its evolution.

“The demographics of our customers are changing, and we’re competing more and more for talent; these issues are central to the success of gaming in the U.S.” Speaking to his fellow Emerging Leaders, Iden says, “As we grow, and the industry grows, our focus should be on what we can do, this class, to create a meaningful legacy—to make this the point of change we can look back on in 20 years and know that we made a positive impact on our industry.”

—Keli Elkins, Director of Corporate Communications and Marketing, The Innovation Group

B

for states throughout the U.S. “I dug in and learned a new area of law.”

Then the Covid-19 pandemic arrived and complicated any plans to expand amenities. “People were hesitant to dive into a crowded atmosphere.”

The pandemic also complicated the law practice.

“It hindered me from traveling to other large offices for face time,” Peacock says. “At the same time, we have the technical capabilities to still meet with attorneys out there, down in satellite offices in Northfield, New Jersey. We still have limited travel. We’re stuck in our own corner of the world down here. It’s different than the way it was done in the past. With gaming law, you travel a lot whether to Las Vegas or overseas.

Most of that has not happened. We have online presentations instead. But we’re still busy.”

For Peacock, the big obstacle was transitioning from a real estate lawyer to largely a gaming lawyer, learning a whole new area.

“I had to teach myself statutes of legalized gaming all over, the subject and procedurals, the regulators in each state,” he says.

Another hurdle was meeting the expectations of a variety of personalities, learning the writing style from each partner, he says.

He credits his father as a mentor, but also the myriad number of lawyers he associated with.

“I’ve had the good fortune to work with wellrespected lawyers along the way,” he says. “But Timothy Lowry is the current mentor for me.

Not only is he my supervisor but a friend of mine.”

Peacock has some advice for new lawyers in the gaming sphere: If you have the time and financial means, get a master’s in gaming law. “You have a leg up entering a law firm. There’s only a handful of deep specialties in gaming law.”

—Bill Sokolic

FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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First to Market A few well-positioned companies were ready for the legalization of sports betting

By Dave Bontempo

C

elebrate one blockbuster, await another.

That’s how IGT and Kambi can assess milestones in the suddenly-booming sports-betting industry.

The well-positioned companies not only enjoyed a prosperous 2021— marked by the launch of online betting in several new states—but they began 2022 with another major score. They participated in the start of online betting in New York, finding another major market to use their products just one week into the new year.

These companies, among others, reap the rewards of significant foresight.

By investing ahead of sports-betting legalization in recent years, they ascend along with this gaming-market sector.

Precise Timing Legalized sports markets blossom throughout the United States, expanding the marketplace for International Game Technology. Two states positioned near each other are set to blow the roof off of revenue projections.

New Jersey has been the online sports-betting bellwether, from launching the bid to topple the federal sports-betting ban in 2018 to subsequent quick deployment throughout the casino industry and racetracks.

The Garden State shattered industry records, becoming the first to surpass $1 billion monthly handle in September. It exceeded the total again in October and November. December’s numbers were expected to make it four straight, and year-long handle will be finalized in the vicinity of $10 billion.

That forecast would have shocked proponents of legalized sports wagering when they fought for its acceptance in the United States. But that’s the vicinity Joe Asher, the IGT president of sports betting, projected for it several years ago.

As CEO at William Hill U.S., now part of Caesars Entertainment, Asher directed his company’s efforts to install brick-and-mortar books in Atlantic City ahead of competition, in 2018. The surge of mobile betting amplified the importance of being in position to take legalized sports bets.

“I’ve been saying for years that I think New Jersey is a $10 billion sports 40

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

betting market in terms of handle, based on the population and the sports culture in the area,” he says. “The fact that New Jersey is on track to achieve that is not at all surprising. We’ve seen that the customer demand for sports and sports betting is very strong and it will continue to be strong for the foreseeable future.”

It is a testament to sports betting that New York operators lined up for the privilege of doing business despite a staggering 51 percent tax rate.

This increases the need to open one’s doors quickly, especially before the lucrative NFL and college football seasons.

A casino must turn to a network of well-connected partners in order to hit the ground running.

IGT has secured major commercial sports betting technology agreements with top B2C sports betting brands such as FanDuel Group, PointsBet, Boyd Gaming and Circa, as well as regional, stand-alone casinos in Arkansas, Mississippi, Colorado, Michigan, Oregon and beyond.

The synergy between IGT and these outfits facilitates entries into new markets. It has already worked magic in New York. Major bets and sevenfigure daily handles were reported as the state launched in time to capture the end of the NFL regular season, the college football national championship and the NFL playoffs.

The impact of an entire NFL and college football campaign starting in late August will be monumental.

“The introduction of mobile sports betting will bring an avalanche of customers to the four mobile operators there,” Asher says. “We’ll see what sort of impact it has on the New Jersey numbers.”

New York represents one of the major states recently launched for mobile sports betting in the United States. Some industry estimates place the sports-betting boom near the halfway point. Asher believes the heyday is far younger than that.

“We have not yet arrived at the halfway point of the U.S. sports betting expansion,” he says. “We’re still in the early innings—probably the second inning. Many major states such as California, Texas, Florida and

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“We’ve seen that the customer demand for sports and sports betting is very strong and it will continue to be strong for the foreseeable future.”

—Joe Asher, President, Sportsbetting, IGT

Ohio remain to go live, and New York mobile betting is just getting started.

“We’ll continue to see business expand as new customers sign up for accounts and bet,” he adds. “Additionally, media companies, professional sports leagues and individual sports teams continue to increase their involvement in the business, which will only drive further growth.”

Asher notes that there is a heavy focus on marketing today, but over time it will shift more toward product and the creation of more enjoyable betting and watching experiences. IGT’s PeakBarTop Flex is designed exactly for these opportunities, he says, as it allows sports fans to enjoy other casino games such as slots and keno, while also watching sporting events and placing bets.

The company’s big performer in the sports-betting space remains the PlaySports platform. IGT will continue to invest significantly in the product.

Here are a few “by the numbers” quick facts on IGT PlaySports: • IGT PlaySports is live in 21 states • Powers more than 60 sportsbooks across the country • 450-plus kiosks deployed in the U.S. • Scalable omnichannel solution for retail and online sports betting • IGT is the exclusive retail sports betting platform provider for industry leader FanDuel Group • Offers range of self-service betting technologies, including CrystalFlex Terminal, PeakBarTopFlex, PlaySports QuickBet Kiosk and PlaySports Pad • Customers include tribal and commercial casinos, racetracks, a lottery and a professional sports franchise • Recently named “Sports Betting Platform Provider of the Year” at the SBC Awards North America The platform is considered one of the most influential technology stacks in the rapidly growing and evolving U.S. sports betting market. In the threeplus years since the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, IGT has emerged as a leading B2B sports betting technology provider in the U.S. IGT’s PlaySports technology is available at the FanDuel Sportsbook at The Meadowlands Racing and Entertainment, the highest-volume sportsbook in the U.S. Unlike other sports betting platform suppliers, IGT has a GLI-approved solution that is backed by IGT’s pedigree in land-based casinos, company of-

ficials indicate. IGT developed the PlaySports stack and service team specifically for the retail, mobile, online and mobile on-premise sports wagering opportunities of the U.S. market.

IGT’s in-house Trading Advisory Services Team can provide PlaySports customers around-the-clock expert odds making with localized pricing for pre-game and in-play bets, continual offer monitoring and optimization, and on-call expertise in every aspect of day-to-day sportsbook operations.

The company’s PlaySports customers can also benefit from compelling and original promotional bets, exclusive parlay and combination wagering and player retention and acquisition strategies designed by the team’s content managers.

Operators can also return maximum value to their customers through IGT’s proprietary, fully integrated PlaySports PAM (Player Account Management).

Now live in several states, the PlaySports PAM is delivering an intuitive user experience that can effectively drive customer acquisition and retention through targeted sports betting promotions—ultimately strengthening the operator-player relationship. Unlike the iGaming PAMs that originated outside the U.S., IGT’s PAM was built from the ground up, specifically for the unique challenges, opportunities and demands of the U.S. sports betting market. Because it is a modular component of the PlaySports platform, the betting engine’s offer creation and rewards availability are second to none.

Another key differentiator for the PlaySports platform is its compatibility with IGT’s portfolio of self-service betting technologies.

Adding self-service betting options to a retail sportsbook environment provides operators choice and convenience for how and where they offer sports betting, and gives players added privacy while placing wagers.

Another State, Another Success It’s been a busy post-PASPA period for Kambi. The London-based company is a leading leading B2B provider of premium sports betting technology and services to the regulated global betting and gaming industry, with dozens of partnerships across six continents.

Kambi was well positioned to power United States operators immediately after sports betting was legalized in the United States.

Subsequent Kambi highlights include opening a U.S. office and leading the group of heavy hitters helping New York open the online sports-betting age during the first week of January.

Kambi headlined one of two groups that earned a coveted 10-year mobile sports betting license at the end of 2021. The highest-scoring group during the process was the Kambi-led consortium, which included its partner Rush Street Interactive, operator of an on-property sportsbook at Rivers Casino and Resort in Schenectady, New York, where it took the first legal FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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Following Championship Weekend, 67 percent of NCAAF Game Parlay bets this season have been placed using Kambi’s multi-game parlay function, company officials say.

on-property bet in the state in 2019.

Although operating in the state includes that high tax rate, New York will be a huge market for mobile sports betting for years to come, according to Sarah Robertson, Kambi’s vice president of sales. She says the company will consider it a major priority.

Robertson says that the New York operation, combined with recently signed agreements with tribal operators Desert Diamond Casinos and Saginaw Chippewa Gaming, will be important in Arizona and Michigan.

This coincides with good news north of the American border for Kambi.

Back in June, the Canadian Senate passed Bill C-218 to allow singlegame sports wagering in the country. Similar to the United States, conducting single-event sports betting offerings will be determined on a province-by-province basis starting with its largest province, Ontario.

The Ontario market could be opened to operators and providers sometime in the first quarter of 2022. If Ontario were a U.S. state, it would be the fifth largest with a population of 14.7 million residents (almost identical to New Jersey’s), which is almost 40 percent of Canada’s population.

Ontario is also home to the most professional and amateur sports organizations in the country with three CFL teams, two NHL teams, and one team in each of the MLB, NBA, MLS and NLL. The market has huge potential, and all the major players in the industry will be waiting to sink their teeth into it.

“We want to be ready before day one,” Rush Street Interactive CEO Richard Schwartz said of plans to launch the BetRivers product in Ontario, on a panel at the recent SBC Betting on North America Summit.

Kambi was able to unveil major enhancements to its Game Parlay product in preparation for NCAAF bowl season and the College Football Playoff, providing an NFL-style offering of combinable bet offers and player props.

The latest improvements to Kambi’s Game Parlay product for college football include an extension to the number of combinable bet offers available, which now stands at more than 20 and is comparable to those offered

by Kambi for the NFL. The product features a market-leading number of player props markets for both single and multi-game parlays, with bet offers including Total Passing/Receiving/Rushing Yards by the Player and Anytime/First/Last Touchdown Scorer.

Kambi’s Game Parlay offering is also unique for its multi-event and multi-sport capabilities. Following Championship Weekend, 67 percent of NCAAF Game Parlay bets this season have been placed using Kambi’s multi-game parlay function, company officials say.

Meanwhile, engagement was significantly increased alongside the offering expansion, with both the percentage of bettors placing an NCAAF 42

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

Game Parlays bet and the percentage of all NCAAF bets placed via Game Parlay doubling compared to the start of the season.

The company also extended its tentacles into the world of horse racing. Kambi recently entered into a partnership to provide its online and on-property sportsbook to Affinity Interactive (AI), an omnichannel gaming industry leader, to power AI’s upcoming retail, digital and online sports betting offering, DRF Sports.

The multi-year partnership will provide AI with access to Kambi’s bestin-class betting solutions, from compliance provision and odds compiling to customer intelligence and risk management, all built on Kambi’s proprietary software platform.

AI’s significant online and mobile presence, including the iconic, 127year-old Daily Racing Form, a leading provider of premium data and authoritative editorial coverage to horse racing and sports enthusiasts in North America, and DRF Bets, one of America’s fastest-growing online and mobile wagering platforms, will enable it to provide Kambi’s technology and services instantly to customers.

The multi-state agreement will introduce the Kambi-powered sportsbook online in Iowa before launching in additional states throughout 2022 and beyond.

“We are thrilled to work with the talented team at Affinity Interactive to provide our leading software to sports enthusiasts across the U.S.,” says Kristian Nylén, CEO of Kambi. “This agreement is an exciting opportunity to showcase the strength of our product and leverage our experience to succeed in the competitive sports betting market. The combination of Kambi’s advanced technology, DRF Sports’ multimedia information capabilities and Affinity Interactive’s regional casino assets makes for an enticing sports betting proposition.”

“This is an exciting time for Affinity Interactive and the sports betting industry,” says James Zenni chairman of Affinity Interactive, “and partnering with Kambi will allow us to capitalize on a number of compelling opportunities and position our businesses for shared success. This is the first step in our strategy of rolling out the DRF Sports brand to online customers for sports betting and iGaming.”

The sports betting industry and those who service it enjoy an unprecedented growth period. It’s a mini-version of the nationwide growth of legalized casino operations that began in the 1990s.

Kambi and IGT are not the only companies enjoying this ride.

But their commitment demonstrates the respect sports-betting products command at major establishments.

CPPNNEFullpage.qxp_Layout 1 9/14/21 1:56 PM Page 40

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NEW GAME REVIEW

by Frank Legato

Cashnado Everi Holdings

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his game series is on Flex Fusion, Everi’s banked product that features communitystyle bonuses across multiple machines.

Cashnado base games Flash Fire and Super Strike are both 243-ways-to-win video slots. During the primary game, landing “Key Pays” symbols on reels one or five awards the player the value of all Key Pays scatter symbols on the screen, which can include 1,000 credits times the bet multiplier, bonus credits and any of five jackpots, which include three static prizes and two progressives, resetting at $1,000 and $10,000.

There also are two separate free-spin features, Flash Fire and Super Strike. Both award six free games, with Super Strike expanding the reels to a 3-5-5-5-3 array for 1,125 ways to win on each spin.

But what makes the game special is a mystery bonus that occurs across the entire bank. The system will flash a “Cashnado Alert” across all machines to heighten anticipation for the coming bonus, called “Cash Grab.” A timer appears counting down the seconds to the community bonus.

The bonus is just what the name says. A tornado of swirling cash flies across the monitors of all machines in the bank, and players touch bills for a credit award or a progressive symbol, which reveals one of the five jackpots.

Manufacturer: Everi Holdings Platform: Flex Fusion Format: Five-reel, 243-ways-towin video slot Denomination: .01, .02, .05, .10 (multi-denom available) Max Bet: 360 Top Award: Progressive; $10,000 reset Hit Frequency: 32% Theoretical Hold: 2%-14%

Lightning Link, Class II Aristocrat Gaming

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ristocrat has made Lightning Link, the groundbreaking game that first introduced the popular “Hold & Spin” mechanic that is now ubiquitous among video slots, available for the first time in a Class II version.

The Class II version of Lightning Link, featured on the MarsX Upright cabinet, was created by the same Aristocrat studio that developed the original Lightning Link. The new Class II edition launches with Aristocrat’s player-favorite titles Heart Throb, High Stakes, Magic Pearl and Tiki Fire.

As with the original game, the heart is a quick-hitting four-level progressive feature, triggered every 100 spins on average. It can be triggered from the base game or a free spin.

The goal of the feature is to fill the screen with as many cashon-reels coin symbols as possible. After an initial six-spin sequence, the free-spin meter returns to three with each subsequent coin. Filling the screen with the coins returns the

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Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

Manufacturer: Aristocrat Gaming Platform: MarsX Upright Format: Five-reel, 25-line or 243-ways-to-win video slot Denomination: .01 through 2.00 Max Bet: Various Top Award: Progressive; $10,000 reset Hit Frequency: Approximately 30% Theoretical Hold: 4%-12%

Grand jackpot, a progressive resetting at $10,000.

While the game functionality is the same, this new Class II version adds $1 and $2 denominations, and there is an increased max bet of $50—options that are not available in the Class III version.

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Lucky Hot 7s Free Games Deluxe

Manufacturer: IGT Platform: S3000 Classic Format: Three-reel, 20-line stepper slot Denomination: .01 Max Bet: 500 Top Award: 65,800 Hit Frequency: Approximately 30% Theoretical Hold: 3%-15%

IGT

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his new game on IGT’s S3000 Classic stepper cabinet reminds us all that one of the supplier’s greatest strengths remains its ability to reinvent the classic reel-spinning genre by adding certain modern elements. In this case, the addition is a bonus that gives the player a choice of playing out the event on spinning reels or a second video reel display.

The base game is a three-reel stepper incorporating 20 paylines. As the game’s name suggests, the main pay table combinations consist of a multitude of “7” combinations, a formula IGT began more than two decades ago with the game Red, White and Blue.

The winning combinations come from blue 7s, red 7s and the special “Lucky Hot 7s” symbols in blue or red, along with various combinations of each. While the game is available in other denominations, it is being promoted as a penny game with the top jackpot for three

Monopoly Lunar New Year Scientific Games

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Lucky Hot 7s on the 20th payline at $400 times the line bet.

There also are “Fiery Wild” symbols in the mix, adding to the hit frequency.

The game’s bonus is triggered when three scattered bonus symbols appear in any active position. Once triggered, players can pick their volatility in the free games bonus where they choose between a lower-volatility 20 games at 20 paylines on the traditional mechanical reels or a mystery four to 24 free games on a 20-line video reel configuration for the “Deluxe Free Games” experience.

Manufacturer: Scientific Games Platform: Kascada Format: Five-reel, 243-ways-to-win slot Denomination: .01, .02, .05 Max Bet: 1,000 Top Award: Progressive; $250,000 reset Hit Frequency: 33.5% Theoretical Hold: 10.36%-13.16%

his video slot, featured on Scientific Games’ new Kascada cabinet, offers a slot-machine reproduction of Hasbro’s recently released Asian version of the legendary board game Monopoly, themed around the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Scientific Games has used all the symbols and Monopoly board properties from the Lunar New Year board game as reel symbols and bonus icons for the slot machine, adding one tiger symbol to the mix in honor of the Lunar New Year that launches the Year of the Tiger February 1. The board-game icons are tokens of good fortune including a lion head, tangerines, gold ingot, lanterns, firecrackers, and a bull.

The base game is a five-reel, 243-ways-to-win slot, but one of the bonus features is an expanding reel feature which, at a maximum six rows of symbols, yields 7,776 ways to win on each spin.

There are three main bonus features, represented by bonus pots above the reel set. Every time a coin lands on the reel array, it can launch any of the three bonus events. A green coin can trigger the Wild Multiplier feature, multiplying wins from 3X to 8X. The blue coin can trigger the expandingreels free-games feature, in which the reels expand on each of at least six free spins. Every blue coin that lands can extend the free spins by one or two, or grant a credit award. As free games are extended, the reel rows expand and multiply the ways to win.

The red coin can trigger the Jackpot Bonus and a chance to win static 46

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

jackpots—the Mini at $10, the Minor at $30—or two progressives, the Major starting at $100 and the Grand resetting at $1,000.

There is a top wide-area “Lunar Progressive” jackpot won when the “Red Coin M” symbol lands, resetting at $250,000.

In the Jackpot Bonus, each of the four lower jackpot meters displays a collection of four of the eight property deeds from the board game needed to win the prize, for 10 free spins. The static prizes can be won more than once during this feature.

There also is a Triple Bonus feature that triggers a free spin round in which all three bonus features are active.

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Tribal Government Gaming is a highly visible publication with a circulation of 20,000, including bonus distribution at NIGA in April 2022, OIGA in August 2022, G2E in October 2022 and other appropriate trade shows and conferences.

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CUTTING EDGE

by Frank Legato

Cashless and Seamless PRODUCT: KioskTrac Mobile MANUFACTURER: Table Trac Inc.

able Trac Inc. has announced the release of KioskTrac Mobile, a oneof-a-kind, fully customized mobile rewards application that leverages the convenience of the player rewards kiosk with the power of touchless transactions on the player’s smartphone.

KioskTrac Mobile utilizes Table Trac’s patented digital currency transfer solution to bring full cashless functionality throughout the property.

Promotional and cash credits move seamlessly from the player’s account to slot machines, table games, restaurants, and any other point of sale using the digital player card.

KioskTrac Mobile is seamlessly integrated with the CasinoTrac Reflexive Rewards offers and KioskTrac promotions, delivering a rich player experience that is consistent across all the player touchpoints.

Players may view their direct mail offers and upcoming promotions and events happening at the casino, saving on expensive monthly mailers.

Customers can play promotional games or claim offers without ever having to leave their favorite slot machines.

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Promotional and cash credits are securely transferred to slot machines with the swipe of a finger.

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Universal Loyalty PRODUCT: eLoyalty MANUFCTURER: Cendyn

endyn’s loyalty platform, eLoyalty, unlocks new and lucrative revenue streams through guest food and beverage spend.

A successful loyalty program looks at all aspects of guest activity and should reveal and expand hotel revenue streams while increasing occupancy, rates, and RevPAR. It also recognizes that not all loyal guests are of equal value.

A guest who stays frequently but does not spend much on ancillary services may be less valuable than a guest who doesn’t stay often but has a high ancillary spend. Additionally, a local guest may not stay overnight but spend significantly on gaming, dining and alcohol. While their lifetime value and spend varies widely, these are all loyal guests and should be included in your loyalty program.

Cendyn’s eLoyalty enables hotels and casinos to deliver a seamless loyalty engagement experience by including their food and beverage outlets as guest touchpoints in their loyalty program. Loyal guests can receive credit towards their loyalty membership status from all food and beverage purchases without having to stay on property and/or place charges on a guest folio. This presents a new way to reward and engage with your loyal, local guests enjoying your restaurant at their favorite hotel for a night out. eLoyalty admins can easily enable and configure non-stay rules for their loyalty program, including the number of points earned on a specified amount

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Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

of revenue, which member levels or tiers are eligible, and the minimum spend required, among other parameters. Here are a few ways operators can leverage eLoyalty’s latest enhancements: • Increase loyalty membership enrollments by incentivizing in-house and local guests with a memorable drink or dine-in experience. Allow them to accrue points from their food and beverage spend that goes toward their membership status.

• Expand your local/drive-in market by advertising and promoting your restaurant rewards and staycation packages. Allow locals to accrue points or rewards towards their loyalty membership with every on-property experience.

Guests would no longer need to charge their food and beverage to their guest folio to receive credit.

• Help drive more direct bookings with offers incorporating food and beverage incentives on the casino’s website. Tying these offers to the loyalty program will encourage website visitors to engage even more with the casino’s brand and services before they book.

By integrating food and beverage spend, hotels can now build deeper relationships with guests and evolve their loyalty program to create a seamless onproperty experience.

For more information, visit Cendyn.com.

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FRANKLY SPEAKING

by Frank Legato

This Modern World The Mirage guided the path forward for the Las Vegas Strip, setting the stage for all that came after, beginning with Wynn’s second masterpiece, the Bellagio. That one was built on the site of the old Dunes, which debuted in 1955 with the photo opp of Frank Sinatra wearing a turban, seated on a camel. (Everything was a stereotype in the good old days.)

My point, as if I had one, is that the groundbreaking Mirage stuff should be preserved somewhere besides the neon boneyard. MGM Resorts has retained the name, logo and intellectual property of the place, so maybe someday, there will be a new Mirage with all the old attractions.

A nostalgia place for ancient people like me.

It would be better than stuffing the tigers and putting them in the boneyard. Heck, the volcano probably wouldn’t even fit there.

Moving on, as you will see with the special section in this issue, crime in casinos has evolved even more than the nature of the casinos themselves. In fact, now you can get pinched for even thinking about a casino crime.

I’m referring to a story from station KWTX in Texas about an arrest just over the border in Oklahoma’s WinStar World casino. According to the story, a Texas man is in jail “accused of planning to rob a jackpot winner from WinStar World, and of planning to sell Xanax at the casino.”

That’s all the story says. We’re left to speculate how police knew the guy was “planning” to do all this stuff. Did he notify security?

“You know, I’m going to take all the money from that jackpot winner, as soon as I sell a few hundred Xanax tablets to those gamblers over there.”

Apparently, you can now be arrested for thinking about misbehaving, like the nuns used to tell us in Catholic school about committing sins. If you thought about it, you were already guilty. (It certainly complicated matters for us all.)

Maybe they’ll put the volcano in WinStar World. Now there, it would fit.

VICT OR R INALDO

E

very so often, something happens to remind me how old I am. Like the news a few weeks ago that The Mirage, bought by Hard Rock International, will soon disappear.

What’s replacing it is going to be major cool, I’m sure— they’re building a giant guitar-shaped hotel tower like they have at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, and there’s nothing like a collection of rock ’n’ roll memorabilia to draw baby boomers like myself like moths to a porch light.

I loved the old Hard Rock Las Vegas, now the Virgin Las Vegas. Here’s hoping the new Hard Rock will be half as cool as that property was back in the day.

But here’s the thing: They’re considering razing the entire Mirage property to create the new Hard Rock from scratch on its ruins. The famous erupting volcano, the dolphin habitat, the live lions and tigers left there by Siegfried & Roy—all gone. That got me thinking about how Las Vegas periodically erases its history entirely.

When I first arrived in Las Vegas as a gaming writer working for Public Gaming magazine, it was 1984. They had just cleaned the mob out of the old Stardust. I went to places like the Landmark, the Riviera, the Hacienda, the old Showboat, the old Sahara. When I saw Siegfried & Roy, it was at the New Frontier.

As we all know, each of these properties has been wiped completely off the Strip landscape and replaced by something new.

(Well, they made a new Sahara, but they bill it “SAHARA”—all caps, in the clever branding gimmick of the day—and it’s nothing like the old Sahara, which had what is still my all-time favorite Vegas restaurant, Don the Beachcomber.)

Now, all of those old places exist only as signs in the Neon Museum “boneyard.” They were systematically replaced by the new Las Vegas Strip, which began when Steve Wynn unveiled The Mirage in 1989, on the site of the former Castaways. I never visited the Castaways, so there was no weepy nostalgia over its demise. (Unlike when they demolished the Stardust and Westward Ho, two joints I always loved.)

But man, do I remember the debut of The Mirage. In fact, I don’t know how many articles I wrote about landscape architecture and the creation of that volcano by Don Brinkerhoff and his Lifescapes International.

(Soon thereafter, I was writing about any manner of casino supply. I used to be able to tell you who made a certain artificial tree, or casino chair, or ashtray. Pathetically, it looms large in my legend.)

FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GOODS&SERVICES

ICE SETS NEW APRIL DATES

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CE London has been rescheduled for April 12-14 at the ExCeL Centre. Last month, Clarion Gaming, the organizer of ICE, announced that the show would be moved from its original schedule of February 1-3 because of concerns about the uptick of positive Covid-19 cases around the world. In addition to moving ICE London, Clarion also said the iGB Affiliate London will be held April 13 and 14, and ICE VOX, which includes the World Regulatory Briefing and the International Casino Conference, will be held April 11-12.

Clarion MD Stuart Hunter “What for many buyers and brands is becoming the most influential week in world gaming succeeds in bringing together upwards of 700 exhibitors to the ExCeL Exhibition Centre, and I would like to pay tribute to the ExCeL senior management team which has worked tirelessly alongside us over the Christmas break in order to accommodate events of this magnitude and help us to deliver the best possible solution to our stakeholders,” said Stuart Hunter, managing director, Clarion Gaming.

“During all of our intensive discussions we have been resolute in our commitment to avoid a clash with the Indian Gaming Tradeshow & Convention (April 19 -22) in Anaheim, California, and have been in close contact with colleagues at the National Indian Gaming Association who in turn have been extremely sensitive to the circumstances caused by the omicron variant. Again, I would like to put on the record my thanks for their understanding and support. We will continue to work through any remaining challenges with all of our clients and stakeholders and support them with their preparations and planning for what is the world’s biggest and most influential gaming industry gathering.”

Last month, Clarion announced a long-term agreement with NIGA to produce the trade show.

PLAYTECH POSTPONES VOTE ON ARISTOCRAT TAKEOVER

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.K.-based iGaming software supplier Playtech PLC has postponed its planned shareholder vote on the proposed US$2.9 billion takeover bid

by Australian slot supplier Aristocrat Leisure Limited.

The vote, slated for January 12, has been delayed three weeks to February 2, as a rival takeover bid is expected from JKO Play Ltd., a consortium led by former Formula 1 team owner Eddie Jordan and former Scientific Games executive Keith O’Loughlin. The U.K. Takeover Panel gave JKO a January 26 deadline to make its own bid.

Aristocrat’s bid, made in October, offers 680 pence per share, a 58 percent premium over Playtech’s share price at the time of 429 pence per share. In November, JKO revealed that it was attempting to acquire funding from a New York private equity fund to finance its bid.

In a filing, Aristocrat claimed its bid “remains the only firm offer that has been made for Playtech.

“The recommended acquisition provides attractive value in cash and enhanced regulatory and financial certainty for Playtech shareholders,” the company said.

Aristocrat further notes that any other potential bidders have already had a substantial amount of time to make an alternative proposal for Playtech. The decision to further delay the relevant shareholder meetings extends the period of uncertainty for all Playtech stakeholders.

“Aristocrat is pleased to note the recent recommendations to Playtech shareholders from proxy advisers to vote in favor of all the resolutions to implement the recommended acquisition. Aristocrat further confirms that the regulatory approvals process remains well on track, and it is committed to completing the acquisition as quickly as possible.”

Aristocrat recently raised AU$1.3 billion (US$965 million) towards its proposed acquisition of Playtech.

50

AGS ACQUIRES LUCKY LUCKY JACKPOT SIDE BET

three-card total; odds are paid if the total is 19 or higher, with the top award paid for suited 7-7-7.

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GARY PLATT, GITCHI GAMING REPLACE DIAMOND JO SEATING

n January 6, AGS announced that it has acquired the player favorite Lucky Lucky Jackpot blackjack side bet from Aces Up Gaming. The asset enhances AGS’ content portfolio and provides opportunity for further growth of its industry-leading progressives.

“With more than 1,000 units across the country, Lucky Lucky is an established and high-performing side bet that supercharges the base game of blackjack for a one-of-a-kind player experience,” said John Hemberger, senior vice president of table products at AGS. “Popular in both e-tables and online gaming formats, Lucky Lucky’s appeal extends beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar live table game environment, making it a natural next step to introduce with a progressive.

“We believe Lucky Lucky will further cement our position as the leading provider of blackjack progressive content in the industry.”

Lucky Lucky totals the player’s cards with the dealer’s up card to trigger pay table outcomes. At the start of each hand, players may place the Lucky Lucky wager in addition to the underlying blackjack wager. Each player receives the first two cards, which are added to the dealer’s up card to create a

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

G

ary Platt Manufacturing and Gitchi Gaming have replaced a competitor’s product with new seating on all slot and table games at Diamond Jo Casino in Dubuque, Iowa—more than 700 chairs total.

For the main slot floor, Diamond Jo chose Gary Platt/Gitchi Gaming’s globally popular Lido Revo model, and for the high-limit area, Diamond Jo chose the patented Monaco model. Roulette and blackjack players are seated on the Lido Revo Mini

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model.

“Players love our chairs because they’re so comfortable,” said Joshua Corrick, chief commercial officer for Gary Platt. “And our customers love that their customers are very comfortable while they’re sitting in a Gary Platt chair. Our unsurpassed comfort, quality, durability and service are why casinos all over the world choose Gary Platt chairs over other brands.”

Each model was hand-crafted to Diamond Jo’s exact specifications, with design elements that were carefully selected to reflect the casino’s individual brand.

ZITRO EXPANDS IN FRANCE, ARGENTINA

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lot supplier Zitro announced that the Barrière Group has installed the multi-game units Link King and Link Me in the group’s eight casino properties in France.

Link King, which was popular among play-

JCM SIGNS MASTER SUPPLY AGREEMENT WITH CAESARS

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CM Global has signed a master supply agreement with Caesars Entertainment, Inc. Under the arrangement, JCM will provide its award-winning bill validation and thermal printing technology to more than 50 Caesars Entertainment destinations in the U.S. and Canada.

Previously, JCM executed master supplier agreements with Eldorado Resorts, Inc. and Caesars Entertainment Corp. separately.

“JCM has been a valued partner of both Caesars Entertainment and Eldorado Resorts for many years,” said Josh Jones, chief marketing officer of Caesars Entertainment. “Now, as a combined group, we are very pleased to continue our strategic relationship with JCM and to enhance our ability to provide our guests with the world-class experiences they expect from Caesars Entertainment.”

JCM will provide its industry-leading iVIZION bill validator, GEN5 Thermal Printer, and ICB systems solutions. These technologies utilize the power of JCM’s award-winning FUZION

system, which brings new opportunities for revenue, heightened security, increased productivity, and marketing and promotions to the casino floor.

JCM technologies are used in more than 85 percent of Las Vegas properties and more than 90 percent of North American tribal and First Nation properties.

SCIENTIFIC GAMES PULLS SCIPLAY OFFER

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cientific Games has withdrawn its July 15 allstock offer to acquire the remaining 19 percent equity interest in that it does not already own of its social gaming business, SciPlay Corp.

Scientific Games will retain an 81 percent economic interest and 98 percent voting interest in SciPlay, the company said in a statement.

SciPlay said in its statement a special committee of independent directors it had formed to evaluate the bid “rejected Scientific Games’ initial proposal,” which was a quarter share of Scientific Games stock for each share of SciPlay.

The panel then negotiated with Scientific Games for better terms, but the committee and Scientific Games were “unable to reach an agreement,” according to the statement.

ers at the casinos of Enghien, Deauville, Cap d’Agde, Toulouse and Blotzheim, is now succeeding at the casinos of Lille, Biarritz, and Ribeauvillé. Following the first performance of Link King, the casinos of Toulouse and Blotzheim have also added Zitro’s Link Me as an innovative proposal to their gaming offering.

Each of the multi-game offerings, presented on the cutting-edge Fusion cabinet, includes four game titles with two progressive jackpots, a twolevel bonus and the popular Bonus Link game feature.

In a separate release, the company announced one of its most sizeable additions in the new gaming property of the UTE formed by Casino Fuente Mayor-San Martín and New Star in Argentina.

The 100 cabinets installed incude an extensive library of Zitro’s most emblematic games, such as Link King, Link Me, Link Shock and 5 To Win, installed in the Fusion cabinet, along with 88 Link Wild Duels, 88 Link Lucky Charms and Bashiba, displayed in the Allure and Illusion form factors, respectively.

FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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Strength in Numbers

More than 160 member companies from 22 countries Nearly $21 billion in direct revenue • 61,700 employees 13 publicly traded companies • ONE POWERFUL VOICE Address worldwide industry expansion, regulatory and legislative issues • Discounts on major trade show booth space Promote responsible gaming initiatives • Updates from influential global industry leaders Advertising discounts in leading industry publications • Educational partnerships benefiting students and members Visibility in AGEM’s print advertisements • Exposure for publicly traded companies in the monthly AGEM Index Join AGEM today and work together with the world’s leading gaming suppliers.

Marcus Prater, Executive Director +1 702 812 6932 • marcus.prater@agem.org Tracy Cohen, Director of Europe + 44 (0) 7970 833 543 • tracy.cohen@agem-europe.com Connie Jones, Director of Responsible Gaming +1 702 528 4374 • connie.jones@agem.org Design & photo-illustration by Jeff Farrell.com • AGEM and charter ESP member since 2007.

AGEM.org

©2022 Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers (AGEM). Membership list current as of January 2022.

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PEOPLE NEUMANN STEPS DOWN FROM AINSWORTH BOARD

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insworth Game Technology announced that its chief executive officer, Harald Neumann, has resigned his position on the company’s board of directors, Harald Neumann but will continue as the company’s chief executive officer, with that role unchanged.

The board will now be undertaking a search process to appoint an additional independent, nonexecutive director.

“We appreciate Harald’s constructive decision to step down from the board to ensure AGT complies with governance best practices,” said Ainsworth Chairman Danny Gladstone. “AGT now has three directors, with two of these being independent non-executives. We look forward to Harald’s ongoing leadership and contribution to AGT following his appointment as CEO.”

MGM SHUFFLES PRESIDENTS

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hree major MGM Resorts casino hotels have new leaders.

Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City has announced the appointment of a new president. Veteran Travis Lunn casino executive Travis Lunn replaces Melonie Johnson, who returns to MGM National Harbor as president and COO, a post she held prior to joining Borgata in 2020.

Lunn had been serving as Southeast group president Melonie Johnson and chief operating officer for MGM Resorts, where he oversaw two Mississippi casinos: the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi and the Gold Strike in Tunica. Replacing Lunn will be Brandon Dardeau, who had most reBrandon Dardeau cently been general manager at Gold Strike as well as participating in the recent reimagining of Mlife to MGM Rewards.

For Lunn, he led MGM Grand Las Vegas as general manager and senior vice president of operations and before that served as vice president of operations for the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las

Vegas, and general manager of hotel operations for The Venetian and The Palazzo resorts.

“It’s an honor to be joining this incredibly talented team,” Lunn said in a statement. “Borgata is a world-class resort destination with a brand recognized nationwide for its spectacular accommodations, culinary program and entertainment offerings. I can’t wait to jump in and connect with all of the employees, guests and local community members.”

ANNA SAINSBURY RESUMES CEO POSITION AT GEOCOMPLY

PEAK NEW PRACTICE LEADER AT HBG DESIGN

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eoComply co-founder and Chairwoman Anna Sainsbury will resume her position as CEO of the company. She replaces the other Anna Sainsbury co-founder, David Briggs, who will become director of the Vancouver firm. His position will zero in on initiatives such as the expansion of cybersecurity services into new markets, according to CDC Gaming Reports.

“David will continue to be an essential part of the company by dedicating himself to special projects, not least by providing core leadership on GeoComply’s future in fintech,” Sainsbury said in a statement.

“He will also focus on managing and delivering innovation on the product front and will take a central role in consolidating our internship and graduate recruitment programs to secure a bright future for our team’s growth.”

Sainsbury oversaw the company as CEO from its founding in 2012 through 2018, a period marked by the expansion of services through products that combat fraud and verify user locations for gaming compliance.

ECLIPSE NAMES OLSON-REYES SENIOR VP OF MARKETING

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versity, equity and inclusion program.

Before that, Olson-Reyes served three years as the executive director, community and corporate relations for Scientific Games. Earlier, she served more than seven years as the senior director of corporate marketing and communications at Bally Technologies.

clipse Gaming, a provider of casino games for tribal and commercial gaming markets, last month announced that Laura Olson-Reyes has joined the company as senior vice president of marketing to lead the company’s marketing, Olson-Reyes communications and community relations strategy and execution.

Olson-Reyes most recently served as vice president of marketing and corporate communications at AGS, where she led numerous corporate and product marketing initiatives, trade shows and events, social media and influencer marketing, public relations and internal communications, and was extensively involved in community relations and the company’s di-

BG Design announced last month that Nathan Peak, AIA, LEED GA, has been named practice leader of the top 10 nationally recognized hospitality design Nathan Peak and architecture firm. In his new role, Peak will oversee design and practice leadership for HBG’s three offices in Memphis, San Diego and Dallas. His promotion to practice leader represents the initial step in HBG Design’s transition to its third generation of firm leadership.

“Of his 20-plus years with the firm, Peak has served as HBG’s design director for nearly a decade, leading and guiding the design direction of the firm’s national hospitality and entertainment projects,” said Rick Gardner, CEO of HBG Design. “Nathan continues to be a transformative leader with immense creative vision and ambition for the firm’s growth,” Peak plans to build on the firm’s deep bench of talented professionals to further position HBG Design’s national presence into multiple sectors of the hospitality industry.

GGB

February 2022 Index of Advertisers

Acres Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 AGEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 AGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Aristocrat Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Aristocrat Technologies/Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Casino Player Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Eclispe Gaming Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Everi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Fantini Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Global Gaming Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 GGB/Tribal Government Gaming . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 IGT PlaySports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 IT Technology Solutions Limited . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 J Carcamo & Associates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Reed Expo (RX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Sega Sammy Creations USA Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 World Game Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Zitro International S.A.R.L. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

FEBRUARY 2022 www.ggbmagazine.com

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CASINO COMMUNICATIONS

Q

&A

Cynthia Kiser Murphey

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ynthia Kiser Murphey had a long and distinguished career with MGM Resorts, leading its human resources efforts for 15 years and later as president and CEO of New York-New York in Las Vegas from 2008 until May 2020. She was recently hired as the general manager of the Palms Casino Hotel in Las Vegas, which is now owned by the San Manuel tribe of Southern California, the first Las Vegas casino resort owned and operated by a Native American gaming venture. The Palms will reopen in the spring. Murphey sat down with GGB Publisher Roger Gros on the day after the deal with previous owner Station Casinos closed. For a full GGB Podcast of this interview, visit GGBMagazine.com.

GGB: What attracted you to the Palms?

Cynthia Kiser Murphey: I think the Palms is a

very unique, and a bit of a boutique asset for our community and for our industry, and there are tremendous opportunities to leverage everything that the Palms has. A meticulous job was done to remodel and to carefully think about how to reenergize and refresh it. So it’s a real opportunity to take what’s here.

Station bought the Palms three years ago, and they were able to put half a billion dollars into renovating it. It’s a beautiful property; it’s still almost brand new. What do you have to do to open the doors?

Well, first and foremost, hire back 1,200 Las Vegans—get 1,200 Nevadans back to work. That’s super important.

There’s a bit of work to do operationally too. When we were with the Gaming Commission yesterday, I made reference to “If you leave your TV turned off for a couple years…” So the sportsbook needs technology as well as other areas of the resort.

We also need to do some work in the back of the house to refresh some of the employee areas, and make that more consistent with the 54

General Manager, The Palms values of the San Manuel organization. The tribe’s values are a really important message to the employees.

There have always been these great themed suites on the property. They had the Playboy suite, they had a basketball suite. They’ve got swimming pools in some of the suites. Are you going to continue still to offer those kinds of themes?

The suites are a really exciting thing, and when we bring on a new executive to send them on the tour they are very impressed. They’re outstanding, and they are in great condition, and just the experiences we can bring to guests will be really, really amazing. So, I look forward to that.

You must appeal to locals to be successful. Will you offer what they want—good video poker, reasonable table game rules, a buffet and a progressive players club?

Very much so. We’re looking at that, and I think what I’ve learned so far about the Palms is there was a lot of geography based on the different entryway doors, so that will be kind of an interesting play on how to merchandise the gaming floor, and really to look at different day parts and look at different customer segments. Embracing the Las Vegas community will be extremely important.

Obviously you didn’t get the Station database when you bought the place, but how are you planning to build a new database of customers?

We’re working on some plans right now to start building that, and that’s obviously going to be a core component of the Palms. And doing it deliberately. This market has changed a lot. The pandemic changed all of the market conditions, so what do we do to respond to that and really come out with something fresh and new for the customer? That will be a very big focus of our team.

Another thing that the Palms has always been famous for is its food and beverage. When Station

Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022

opened, they had a couple of celebrity chefs like Michael Symon Mabel’s BBQ. What kind of plans do you have for the food and beverage outlets here?

Well, Michael Symon is definitely a big part of it. He actually came to see us; we just met with him recently in Mabel’s. A few members of our team went to Cleveland a few months ago to enjoy his amazing barbecue.

We’re also very excited about the steakhouse, Scotch 80 Prime. And really adding an element that I believe was initially intended—we know what Scotch 80 means if you live in Las Vegas; it’s in a historic neighborhood of Las Vegas, and we’ll celebrate that, tying that to the fame of that steakhouse. I’m super excited about doing that.

Tell us about how you plan to build an executive staff. You have this great background in human resources, so what are your plans to recruit some of the executives you want to bring in here?

We’re going to be a small and mighty team of people, working hard to bring together people with the right skill set with the right approach and philosophy. It’s very important for us to be completely aligned with the values of San Manuel, and the rich history and the culture, the real commitment to people, the real humble approach to how we do business, and finding the right people will be crucial.

And that’ll be my job in the next 90 days—to get that group fired up and get everybody lined up with all the things we needed to do to get open.

This is the first hotel casino in Las Vegas that’s owned by a Native American tribe. Actually, their hospitality arm, we have to make that designation. But that must be exciting, to be able to take the lead in something that’s really groundbreaking like this.

The moment of history is not lost on me. It’s very symbolic and very important for San Manuel and for GHA—the Gaming and Hospitality Authority—it’s very important that we do this right. And we have a legacy to create for them, and we own that. And we’re going to do everything we can to honor them and to represent them and to be the kind of property that they can be proud of.

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