14th NOVOMATIC Symposium

The 14th NOVOMATIC Symposium took place on 24 and 25 October 2022 in the idyllically located Hotel Krainerhütte near Baden. At the invitation of NOVOMATIC Executive Board member Dipl.-Ing. Ryszard Presch and organised by the Group Investment Management department and moderated by Andreas Öhner, Head of Investment Management, and Dr Alma Pupo, Head of Group Operations Administration & Support, numerous managers from the operational area met once again to exchange experiences.

The symposium was organised with the help of various Group departments such as Graphic Design, 707 Games, Interior Design Solutions, Print and Advertising Graphics, Product IT Infrastructure and Logistics.

The invitation was again accepted by numerous top operational managers from Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Northern Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, the UK and Ukraine.

The 14th NOVOMATIC Symposium was opened by Andreas Öhner with a minute of mourning for the recently deceased esteemed colleague Sotirios Liantas from North Macedonia. Andreas Öhner then introduced the two-day programme and the individual speakers.

This was followed by the first presentation by Thomas Komnacky, Vice President Global Operations, on the

topic of 'Operational Future and Change in Gaming Operations', wherein he pointed out the importance of investing in innovative systems and technologies to set new standards in terms of entertainment offerings, customer relationship management and regulatory compliance. He also spoke about fully leveraging the synergies between Gaming Technology and Gaming Operations to strategically develop markets and business areas.

Bernhard Schröder, SEE Operations, then presented the two tools 'SNOW Performance Heat Map' and 'NXCS Tableau Reporting' with a live demonstration of their functionalities and capabilities for reporting.

Jakob Rothwangl and Thomas Schmalzer, Vice President Global Sales, then gave the technical presentation 'Realignment of NOVOMATIC AG's sales and product management'. They presented the new organisational structure and the individual teams and focused their further explanations on key milestones and the new sales strategy.

In the next technical lecture on 'Rental Models', Christian Catasta, Head of Market Analysis & Business Development and Head of Rental Business, focused on the pricing policy, various standard rental models and special packages and rounded off the topic with the most important macroeconomic indicators.

This was followed by legal presentations by Dr Alexander Legat, Head of Group Legal, on 'Innovation Management' and by Dr Julia Schachter, Group Legal, on 'IP Enforcement', which, based on the importance of the topic, covered a wide range of legal options for the protection of intellectual property.

As part of the next item on the programme, the symposium participants visited the new showroom at the group headquarters, where colleagues from Global Sales presented current products and offers. The first day of the symposium ended with dinner at the Klostergasthaus Thallern in Gumpoldskirchen.

The second day was opened by Dr Alma Pupo in TED style and with the announcement of the next specialist lecture on the topic of 'New orientation in operations using the example of arcades in Germany' by Martin Restle, Managing Director LÖWEN ENTERTAINMENT GmbH. He spoke about the greatest current challenges in the gaming arcade segment in Germany and emphasised in this context in particular the problems in the recruiting area.

The subsequent presentation on 'Online Gaming Update' was given by Marcantonio Bottaro, RMG Brand Management Greentube GmbH, who offered an insight into the latest trends in online gaming and answered numerous questions from the audience.

Finally, Felipe Ludeña, Managing Director NOVOMATIC Sports Betting Solutions GmbH, gave the expert presentation 'Sports Betting Visions Worldwide' and stimulated an intensive group discussion that produced highly interesting results.

All in all, it can be said that the 14th NOVOMATIC Symposium once again provided an ideal platform for the international exchange of knowledge between the operations managers and representatives of various specialist departments in selected subject areas and contributed to strengthening the 'wefeeling' in the group.