Last year it was virtual, but this year top gaming industry insiders were in Las Vegas for the annual Global Gaming Expo, better known as G2E.

What lies ahead for the industry, and how is it rebounding from the pandemic?

That's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

(Kipp Ortenburger) Welcome to Nevada Week.

After more than a year of uncertainty, the Global Gaming Expo returned in person to Las Vegas.

Now, the gaming industry of course is recovering from the lockdowns brought on by the pandemic, but even with the slowdown in the economy because of the summer spike of COVID cases, gaming is getting better.

I spoke with two gaming reporters about where the industry is now.

Welcome.

It's a little bit self-explanatory where we are.

We are on the expo floor of G2E.

I've got Howard Stutz with me from the Nevada Indie, and I've got Brian Horwath from the Las Vegas Sun.

Thank you so much both for being here; we really appreciate it.

Let's talk, and Howard, let's start with you.

The vibe here.

I mean, let's not forget last year we had a virtual, now we're back in person.

I mean, do you feel a little more excitement than usual here?

(Howard Stutz) What I've seen is it looks-- it's not as many people, obviously.

There's not going to be 27,000 when they come up with the final numbers, and I'm just noticing, it looks like the booths are a lot smaller, and there's a lot more space.

I mean, we're standing in a spot that probably would have been a booth last year, you know, last year or probably was in 2019.

But the vibe is here because people are excited to be back, and I think the comment that Bill Miller made to me about a week ago, he said a smaller G2E is going to be a more effective G2E, so they think they're going to get a lot of buyers.

Remember, they haven't been able to do this.

They haven't been able to go and test these machines and look at the products, look at the different systems and they're able to do that now, and I think that's where the excitement is.

But it is a much smaller show right now, and that's to be expected.

I mean, we're wearing masks.

You know, they went through this whole vaccine protocol to get in.

Not surprising, but yeah, the excitement is there, Kipp.

I really think so.

-We should bring attention to there's no international companies here as well.

That's a big difference too, correct?

-A big difference, yes.

They usually would have had-- the attendance of the international delegation, there's no direct flights to Las Vegas.

You got to jump through a bunch of hoops and hurdles I guess for international travelers to get here, so hopefully that will all get cleared up by next year.

But yes, that's what's really kind of-- the numbers are down, but it still looks like-- you know, the first day it looks exciting.

We'll see how the week goes, the next couple days go.

-Bryan, and also G2E, they marketed it this year as quote, "Reunite and Energize."

I mean, this really is the first time where the gaming industry has been able to get together, and let's not forget the tough year that 2020 was.

I mean, is this the first time really where we're seeing the whole gaming industry together since the pandemic?

(Bryan Horwath) Yes.

Really it's been about two years, and it's interesting.

I was waiting outside for the show floor to open this morning and, you know, there's people-- you could just hear people reconnecting and they haven't seen each other for, you know, basically two years or so.

You know, this is an industry where people know each other like probably most industries, but I think it's kind of a close-knit industry.

And I think, you know, what Howard said really rings true.

I mean, people are excited to be here.

It's definitely a bit toned down than it would be in a normal year, whatever normal is right now.

But I think people are excited to be here, and I think this type of thing is what obviously Las Vegas wants to get back to.

We want to get back to having conventions, and this is one that certainly, you know, the city is excited about.

-And let's talk about something you've reported on, especially related to getting back, is revenue over 2021 is at the same level as we saw pre-pandemic.

I mean, how much is that adding to the excitement, especially for some of the local vendors we have?

-Well, I think people are pretty excited.

You know, 2021 is probably going to end up being possibly the most lucrative year for revenues for the gaming industry all time, which is pretty remarkable, you know, if you think about what's been happening.

So I think people are excited.

You know, I think we're still in the pandemic, so there's still some unknowns out there.

I know there's been some talk about well, you know, folks have gotten checks from the government, and maybe they've been kind of bored, maybe they've picked up some gaming habits.

Are they going to keep those going forward.

So those are all things that we'll have to see how they shake out.

But I think there's a lot of optimism.

-Yes, really good point.

Howard, I want to ask you this too.

I mean, the subcontext could definitely be caution, because we are dealing with a lot of relief that could potentially be a factor of why we're seeing such big revenue, and let's not forget this isn't just the expo.

We've got a lot of educational sessions here, a lot of keynote presentations.

Are you hearing or do you expect to hear any type of cautious optimism in a lot of these presentations here?

-I don't know about the presentations.

The AGA did put out a statement this morning saying the CEO survey said most are optimistic about the recovery.

You know, a lot of analysts early on said oh, it's going to be 2023, 2024 before Vegas gets back to the pre-COVID numbers that we had in 2019.

As Bryan said, you know, $12 billion in gaming revenue in 2019 was only the third time in history the state has done this, and it's still below the all-time record of 12.7.

I don't know if we'll catch the all-time record.

Right now they're trending-- it's trending toward a $12 billion number.

The good news from the last month was the Strip numbers were up, had another good month, and they're actually less than a percent below the 2019 totals.

So that's a good sign for the Strip but then again, we're still missing the baccarat play because of international travel.

We're missing the midweek business because, you know, there's still not a lot of conventions like this going on in midweek.

So it's still a challenge time for the Strip, and that's where I think I want to see what the analysts have to say after this show's over and talking to people.

Are they moving up their projections, you know, Vegas and the gaming industry back to the pre-20, pre-COVID numbers finally, get behind it, and we'll see.

-Let's talk a little bit about what we're seeing on the expo floor, Bryan, what's top of mind?

I took a stroll around.

I mean, cashless gaming is everywhere here, maybe a sign of the COVID pandemic and the result of that.

What are you looking at?

What's really top of mind that you want to look at at the expo?

-Yes.

I think talking to folks and talking to some people at the American Gaming Association, you know, the whole cashless topic, that's a big factor of this convention.

That's been talked about a lot; that's going to continue to be talked about a lot.

You know, are we going to move overnight from cash into no cash?

No, I don't think so.

That's going to be a process, it's going to take some time, but certainly people are definitely open.

You know, I think what we've seen during the pandemic is we've kind of pushed some of these trends forward.

I think cashless was one of those trends where it made sense where you don't always want to be handing someone money and handling money and, you know, we're worried about the virus and germs and everything like that.

So that might have pushed that forward a little bit.

I think people are talking about that a lot, and it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

-Howard, I want to ask you the same question.

What's top of mind?

What are you really looking at especially on the expo floor here?

-Well, all of a sudden I've seen booths that actually are dedicated to sports betting.

I just walked by a company that's a whole sports betting booth, and that's because of the sign of the times.

I mean, sports betting is legal now in 27 states.

There's another five states that are going to, you know, be operational probably by the end of the year.

Sports betting, they've never seen gaming expansion like sports betting has been in the last three years.

The dedication to it by a lot of these companies, whether it's a cashless product, you know, for mobile sports betting, different types of opportunities whether it'd be hot back behind the house, behind the scenes on sports betting.

That's what I'm seeing a lot of.

That's what I'm kind of looking forward to, walking around and checking to see what everybody's saying.

Cashless gaming, as Bryan said, that is the huge-- digital payment-- huge thing that's going to go on.

We're going to see this move forward over time now in the industry.

It's finally come out.

Resorts World, you know, has cashless gaming in their digital payments on their table games, the first place in Vegas to do that.

Boyd will be moving forward with that.

So yes, both of those products are going to be really fascinating to watch moving forward.

But I'm kind of interested in how the sports betting thing moves forward here.

-It's true.

A lot of sports betting, of course the cashless gaming, and then a lot more digitization of some of the table games and the roulette games and things like that.

Is that relatively new?

-That's new.

I mean, they've tried.

There's the stadium-style gaming which a couple different companies have tried where, you know, it's like you have these kiosks, and there's a central system that manages that.

That's been tried, and we're seeing that now a little bit more.

A lot of this came about because of COVID because people don't want to touch money.

There's the touchless idea.

I think look, cash is always going to be part of the gaming industry.

It may not be the big way it was, the way it always was.

It's going to be part of the industry, but how long ago was it when all you saw were slot machines with coins dropping out?

It was like 20 years ago, and that's gone.

I mean, slot machines are all digital and ticket in, ticket out.

So, you know, that's what we'll see.

-Bryan, we've got about a minute left.

Final question.

Our team, we're new here.

For somebody that's more seasoned, give us a little bit of advice.

How do we approach the expo especially, you know, give us some guidance.

-I think you have to-- you have to walk around.

You have to get your steps in and see what's new.

See what's-- it's kind of sensory overload here, so I think you kind of have to maybe pace yourself a little bit.

But it's an exciting place to be, you know.

I think for someone who hasn't been down to an event like this, again a little bit scaled back this year but certainly very exciting to be down here, and I know a lot of people are happy to be back in person.

-Yes, very exciting.

Just in the few moments we've been here already.

-Oh, one thing for Bryan-- tennis shoes, soft shoes.

Soft shoes to walk around here.

-Soft shoes, and I'm already sweating a little bit, so maybe some cool weather gear might help too.

Well, Howard and Bryan, thank you so much; we really appreciate it.

Well, G2E features some of the coolest casino tech that will be coming to the Strip or of course your favorite locals casino.

We walked the convention floor to talk to gaming companies both big and small and see the latest games to play and how to play those games in comfort.

We're here with Tim from Scientific Games.

Thanks so much for showing us this.

You know, I've been walking around looking at lot of the expos, and there's so much digitization that's going in on tables and interactivity, and yet this still tangibly looks like an actual table.

What are we looking at here?

(Tim Caffarelli) So what we're looking at here is really pushing that envelope on digitization even further.

You know, seven or eight years ago, you go onto a table game, you didn't see a lot of digital equipment on a table.

Now we've got progressives, et cetera, so this is really the next iteration of that evolution of the digital age.

What we're looking at here today is basically an augmented reality projection onto table game felt that actually allows you as the player to kind of interact with this game.

So for example this game here is leveraging our brand 88 Fortunes from our slot environment, very popular brand.

We're bringing it into the table games environment and offering it as a progressive side bet on an actual blackjack game.

So what you're looking at is a blackjack game here today with that bet.

The way it actually works is players will actually place the progressive bet out there.

If you want to go ahead and throw two coins out there, one on each one, and then maybe on this.

Yes, I'll let you play two hands here today.

The system will actually recognize that you've got a bet there.

Go ahead and place one in the ante circle back here for your main 21 wager, but basically that's what you're going to see there.

We'll go ahead and actually lock this bet in.

The dealer does that in terms of that, collects these progressive wagers just like today.

We're going to go ahead and do a quick gaff here, but basically cards will get dealt normal blackjack standard here.

And the game actually recognizes this position has actually hit the trigger event.

So we can actually show animations on the table.

Not only does it identify it for the player but the dealer as well, so the dealer is going to come here and acknowledge that's actually a jackpot-winning hand.

They're going to go ahead and hit the jackpot, and it's going to bring up an interactive wheel.

At this point we bring a cash spin wheel onto the table felt that you can now interact with as the player that actually hit that 6-7-8.

The dealer goes ahead and enables that wheel to be spun.

Seeing the hand, you can go ahead and touch that wheel to initiate the spin, and now you're going to see what you win.

The dealer goes ahead and confirms the jackpot.

We actually display it on there so not just you but everyone can see what you've won, and effectively that's the end of the hand and we're back to a regular blackjack game.

-Wow!

Tim, thank you.

-Yes, thank you.

-Appreciate it.

We have Tom from Konami.

Thank you so much for joining us.

-Absolutely, great to be here.

Thank you.

-Yes.

What a wonderful display, and the most basic question first off is what does Konami do here?

We maybe think more of the software side.

Is that all you're doing?

(Thomas Jingoli) So Konami gaming, we're a subsidiary of Konami Corporation in Japan, the large publicly traded Japanese conglomerate.

This is the gaming subsidiary.

When we refer to gaming, we refer to casino slot machines, the casino management system that we have, our SYNKROS system, and games.

So we provide out of our facility in Las Vegas right on Sunset, we have a half-a-million square-foot facility.

We do all the development and manufacturing there, and we ship product all over the world, our games as well as our casino management system.

-So being that you are local, I mean, right down the road from where we are right now, let's talk a little bit about local evolution of what you are doing for our market here along the Strip and in our local casinos as well.

-Yes.

I mean, you know, first of all it's great to be back in the convention center.

Our booth is a lot smaller than it normally is, but I think a lot of the booths around are.

I think it's great, really good for the city to have trade shows come back.

Obviously it's great for the industry, and it's great for the town.

So the town really isn't fully going to recover until the trade show business comes back, so we're happy to be part of that.

And we employ over 500 people, the majority of those are local and live here in town, and it's a great place to work.

Engineering, you know, all different walks of life when it comes to the business side.

We have manufacturing jobs, and we do everything here in town.

So all the product you see here on the floor has been built in Las Vegas and developed.

-Wonderful.

Now, we were over at Scientific Games and we were looking at a table and, I mean, the gamification that's going on that has aspects that are like your traditional slot machines.

When you look at that business, is that a worry to Konami?

-Well, we've looked at that.

I mean, certainly the electronic table side of the business has been pretty popular with the pandemic.

A lot of people feel, you know, more comfortable.

They can space out and do things.

Interblock is another one right here.

There's lot in that space.

We haven't entered that space.

Our primary focus for our company is what you see here, our core cabinets, which is our Dimension series that we just launched, and our casino management system.

-Well Tom, thank you so much.

I appreciate your time.

-Thanks for coming in, appreciate it.

Thank you.

-So we're here with Jason and Dave of KGM.

Obviously we've been talking, looking around the entire floor, talking a lot about the tech that we see here.

Sometimes we forget about chairs and how there's a lot of tech, obviously a lot of thought that goes into chairs.

Tell us a little about these chairs and kind of like where the technology maybe has evolved recently.

(Jason Cohen) So KGM is based out of Philadelphia.

We've been in business for 16 years, and originally we were a distributor for seating and then what we found out was that a chair is something a casino basically is looking for and one that's going to be comfortable, that's going to be price consistent and that's not going to have any issues.

So what we did was we bought chairs from the industry around the industry for a few years.

We reverse-engineered those chairs, and we decided to build our own chairs.

We build them all in-house in Philadelphia.

All the products are sourced locally in the United States, and over time what we continue to do, we continue to evolve our chair, to build a chair that's going to be comfortable and price efficient so we don't have to compete with imports overseas.

-So Dave, obviously we're locals here.

We walk the casinos, we see people that are plopped in chairs for a long time in front of slot machines.

I mean, talk about the design of a chair, how much goes into this and exactly what kind of attributes you're really looking at here.

(Dave Foell) You're looking for comfort most often.

You know, a big part of that is your foam, so we pour that in-house in Philadelphia.

So it's all about rebrand or constantly changing, constantly working on what's comfort.

So its design and comfort are the big things.

That's what I deal with mostly.

You want people to stay in the chairs for as long as possible, so the big part of it is really just your foam and your design, your shape.

You know, you got to fit everybody, all shapes and sizes you guys got out there so that's the big thing, you know.

Years go into it, so we're planning ahead and looking for future designs.

-And then let's talk about the design too.

Obviously, it has to marry with whatever casino it's in.

I mean, you're doing all that in-house too, I assume.

-Yes.

We work with a lot of designers.

We work with the casino directly.

You know, there's a lot of different color schemes people are looking for.

Obviously, they have a theme going in so they kind of come in with an idea and we, you know, help them from there.

-Let's talk a little about the business end here.

I mean, is business growing in this sector?

-Absolutely.

So our seating division and our company in general has grown substantially since the shutdown with COVID.

We do have a lot of corporate deals in place with companies throughout North America.

I would say that our forecast, it's a little challenging to forecast projects right now based on the unknowns still, and it's also tough to get materials because materials still have skyrocketed and the supply chain issue to deliver product on time.

Other than that though, our business is growing, booming.

We're looking to hire, and it's tough to find employees right now.

-Yes, two things we talk about a lot on our show, the hiring problem and of course the supply issue with some of our our shipping as well.

Gaming is not going anywhere.

I mean, we've been walking around and we're seeing a lot of table games here.

Chairs for slots, chairs for table games, you do both, first of all.

-Yes.

We make chairs for table games and slots.

Our company's a little bit different.

We're involved as a manufacturer.

We manufacture and distribute slot machines and online gaming, but what we do know is brick-and-mortar casinos are here to stay.

People are always going to find brick-and-mortar casinos, and the younger generation, we've started to see them coming into casinos today, especially table games and slots.

And that chair is very similar.

It's just a little bit different depending on-- the table game chair may be a little less, not as wide for a table game chair than for slots, and the cap.

What Dave was saying was all the operators that come in and look for chairs from different casinos all have a different opinion on what they want.

So what we build for one casino may not necessarily be right for another casino, so we try to continue to evolve our production and the manufacturing and to work with whatever casino that's willing to sit down and talk to us about chairs.

-Absolutely, and you need so many diverse designs obviously too.

Jason and Dave, thank you so much.

We really appreciate it.

-Thank you.

-We have Paul from IGT here.

Thank you so much for joining us and, I mean, this is one heck of a piece of gaming equipment here.

Explain to us exactly what this is and what does it do.

(Paul Baskerville) This is our new concurrent multigame.

So as you can see here, we're running multiple games simultaneously.

If I come down onto the screen here, you'll see that we're offering eight games.

So the player can actually choose to play eight games one at a time or all eight games at the same time if they wish.

So in here we have a baccarat game running, and you can see we have two wheels here.

So the player can switch from baccarat quickly; roulette, place the bets on roulette, and if they want autobet on the roulette, keep the bet going.

Switch over to triple-hand blackjack, play a game of blackjack, switch back over to the roulette, see how the roulette's looking and, you know, back to my baccarat game.

How's my baccarat game doing?

So I've got the bets still running here.

I've got them running now in autobet mode.

So, you know, lots of choices, lots of content.

We're also specializing in focusing on the side bet content to add more volatility to the game and excitement to the player, you know, and it's just more choice, more games, more excitement.

-Yes.

We've talked about that a lot throughout the expo, the side bets, the different bonus structures you have.

My question to you is eight games at once, is that humanly possible?

It must be.

-Well, you know, if you're superhuman, you can do it.

It's there as an option if you'd like to do it.

It's more about choice, you know, giving the player the option to play the games, to choose which games you want to play.

I mean, if I go back into my menu, the player can also start choosing if I like baccarat, I'm a baccarat player and I want to play four baccarat games at once, I can start dragging and dropping these games.

So now I've got 1, 2, 3, 4 baccarat games at the front, and if you go back out to play, now you've got 1, 2, 3, 4 baccarat games as the first four games, right?

You can play all four at the same time using the autobet feature, playing that content, playing those side bets.

-Paul, thank you so much.

-Yes, thank you.

-Some of the most original tech in the gaming industry is being created about 10 miles off the Las Vegas Strip at Black Fire Innovation.

This is a public-private partnership that mixes students from UNLV with global tech companies to create a cutting-edge ecosystem.

The Nevada Week team got a tour.

As the Entertainment Capital of the World, Las Vegas is always the boundaries of what's possible.

Vegas is founded on innovation.

You know, we built the Strip in the middle of the desert.

There's a lot of entrepreneurs here.

Las Vegas native Russ Logan worked in Silicon Valley, but now he's helping to bring innovation home.

(Russ Logan) We are leading technology that builds digital humans.

So we take the face of somebody, the voice of somebody, and we create a digital rendering of you to act on your behalf.

And what will his artificial intelligence look like on the Las Vegas Strip?

We can picture our digital humans on billboards, in mirrors, in holograms and all these types of different things.

Imagine going into these hotels and having a Gordon Ramsay or an Usher speak to you as a resident there with their digital AI to, you know, create this almost thirst trap, as we call it, for people to get excited about and interact.

Christopher Mitchell's Las Vegas-based company Airplate also created a cutting-edge product.

(Christopher Mitchell) What we are is we're a digitronic license plate company that basically ensures civilian and law enforcement safety on our roads.

Mitchell, who's new to Las Vegas, was attracted by the smart city initiative.

This seemed to be the best place for a growing tech ecosystem, and we wanted to come out and make sure that we could make a name for ourselves and also get in at the very beginning stages of what Las Vegas is doing to become a smart city.

What I think that Las Vegas is ultimately going to be is the truly first smart city in the United States of America.

Both Airplate and the AI Foundation operate their businesses out of Black Fire Innovation, which is connected to the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

(Bo Bernard) Black Fire Innovation is UNLV's innovation hub alongside 80 companies.

This is very much both a university campus but also an outward-facing business-engaging community as you've seen today.

Black Fire Innovation anchors the Harry Reid Technology Park.

It's here that university-driven innovation meets the broader business community in Southern Nevada.

More than anything else, this building is about collaboration.

We have 80 companies who are now here, and by "here" we mean either they have an office here or a project here.

Those 80 companies are worth $1.15 trillion altogether.

-For me this was just the perfect environment that gave me exactly what I needed, the people I needed to be around, and ever since I got here, it's just been a nonstop, you know, growing element to what it is that we're doing, and I couldn't be more excited.

-Black Fire, all the partnerships we have in town, it just creates this ecosystem in which you can move much more quicker than some of these places like Silicon Valley or New York and the other places that I've been in the tech field.

Black Fire Innovation fosters the growth of its associated companies and offers real-world educational opportunities for UNLV students.

Caesars and UNLV together envisioned this space to represent the future of all the things that you might find in an actual casino-resort.

There's a sportsbook, 3D TVs that require no glasses, an esports arena, a Panasonic and LG area, a kitchen of the future and a mock hotel room.

All of UNLV now is excelling in the way that our hotel school has long excelled, by insisting on learning in environments like this, real-world environments, as opposed to just book learning that takes place in a standard, old-fashioned classroom.

As UNLV's Black Fire Innovation students graduate and its associated companies grow, so will Las Vegas and its gaming and hospitality industries.

For Nevada Week, I'm Heather Caputo.

Thanks Heather, and thank you, as always, for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on the show, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next week.

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