The fall in attendance at the Global Gaming Expo 2009 was evident; in truth no one had expected anything else. However, in conversation with executives from the top gaming companies the majority maintained that the Las Vegas Show had been a complete success. In fact the American Gaming Association was able to report a 7% rise in attendees at the G2E conferences from 2008 numbers.

AGA Senior Vice-president Judy Paterson said, “Actually we would have been delighted to achieve similar figures to last year at the Conference programmes. We were expecting numbers to be reduced this year so we were somewhat surprised.” According to the AGA, official figures show that there were 560 exhibitors at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

For companies like International Game Technology (IGT) the Las Vegas expo is nearly always the event with the most impact on their exhibition calendar. In the case of IGT this is not only because the company accounts for the largest booth area but also because of the attendance by a large number of top executives, managers, technicians and sales personnel. Speaking to a very busy Kurt Quartier, Vice-President International Casino Markets, he commented that IGT was having an excellent show where the displays of Texas Hold’em Extreme and Sex and the City were proving to be immensely popular.

Julie Brown, IGT Public Relations Manager, said, “We are thrilled with the reaction of our clients to our products and how they have been received by gaming analysts and investors. We have strong initial figures for our Sex and the City gaming machines, so much so that our production managers have started to call it a ‘monster’ and we are happy to hear this.” In our visits to Wynn Resorts’ Encore and the Hard Rock Casino we were able to watch the IGT ‘monsters’ in play. The machines certainly have appeal for players with their sensuous theme, attractive images, bonus system, interaction of screens and constant prizes.

We are sure that similar comments about their products have been made by other big manufacturers such as Bally, Novomatic, WMS gaming, Aristocrat, Shuffle Master, etc. and perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is now visible after the devastating global economic recession. We observed a lot of enthusiasm in the corridors of G2E this year even though this was not replicated in the majority of Strip casinos over the week of the show. However, we did note that from Friday evening play picked up and things seemed to be getting back to normal. (E-11.23.09)

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