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Global Gaming Business Magazine GGB DECEMBER 2024 •Vol. 23 •No. 12 •$10 Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers UAE LICENSING SPORTS BETTING PLATFORMS PENN’S JUSTIN CARTER SPORTS BETTING IN INDIAN COUNTRY Irish Eyes ASCENDANCE An iconic brand enters a new era AINSWORTH 10 Trends for 2025Vol. 23 • No. 12 COLUMNS CONTENTS december 3 COVER STORY 18 Trending for 2025 Our annual rundown of the Top 10 gaming trends for the coming year includes hot game styles and cabinets from the slot manufacturers, new technological horizons in artificial intelligence, the outlook for sports betting and iGaming, and much more. 30 Emerald Era Gaming operators in Ireland are preparing to reapply for licensing and make any adjustments needed to comply with gambling legislation passed in October. 34 Tribal Gaming Online While a partnership forged by the Seminole tribe may provide a model for online gaming in Indian Country, sports betting, sweepstakes games and other challenges remain. 40 Microbetting Futures Technology permitting microbetting transactions is evolving to become one of the most important tools for online sportsbooks. DECEMBER 2024 www.ggbmagazine.com Global Gaming Business Magazine 10 The Gaming Industry Outlook 12 Politics, Financing and iGaming Fears 28 Mastering Licensing in the UAE 4 6 8 13 38 44 46 47 48 49 50 DEPARTMENTS Ainsworth Emerges Ainsworth Game Technology has ramped up research and development to expand the Australian supplier’s North American business with new hardware, market-specific development and a product line growing well beyond its well-known library of high- denomination titles. FEATURESWhere others 4 Vol. 23 • No. 12 • DECEMBER 2024 Roger Gros, Publisher | rgros@ggbmagazine.com X: @GlobalGamingBiz Frank Legato, Editor |flegato@ggbmagazine.com X: @FranklySpeakn Jess Marquez, Managing Editor jmarquez@ggbmagazine.com Monica Cooley, Art Director mcooley@ggbmagazine.com Terri Brady, Sales & Marketing Director tbrady@ggbmagazine.com Beck Kingman-Gros, Associate Publisher & COO bkingros@ggbmagazine.com Lisa Johnson, Communications Advisor lisa@lisajohnsoncommunications.com X: @LisaJohnsonPR Columnists Frank Fantini | Dave Forman | Sandra Mottoh Contributing Editors Julia Carcamo | Jill R. Dorson | Earle G. Hall Nicole Macedo | Cory Morowitz | Dr. Kahlil Philander Bill Sokolic X: @downbeachfilm Andrew Tottenham | Cole Rush | Brian Wyman ______________ • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Official Publication I t’s only natural as we reach the end of the year to look back and reflect on what went right, what went wrong and how we can improve moving into the new year. For the gaming indus- try, 2024 was a pretty good year depending upon where you are in the world. Record revenues con- tinued in the early part of the year, and flattened out later. So what can we do to reclaim those increasing revenues? That’s the kind of reflection that corporations make. And that’s why we publish our 10 Trends each December. We want our readers to be aware of what’s coming up in the new year, how it will affect their lives and their businesses, and how to get ready to deal with them. I must confess, though: Some of these trends go over my head. Let’s start with Earle Hall’s piece on AI. I know artificial intelligence is all the rage and it will bring some good things to gaming, but my marketing sense is offended that computers may be able to do it better. Ditto for Cory Morowitz’s piece on macroeconomics. I can see why that’s important, but how in the world do you prepare for the unexpected? Frank Legato’s two articles on slot trends leave me perplexed. And Kahlil Philander’s push for more effective self-exclusion programs strikes me as just common sense. So I’m not really very good these days at look- ing into the future. I seem to enjoy the past much more, probably because it is like a comfortable blanket. But as I wind down my day-to-day activities with GGB and Clarion, I actually started thinking about my future. I will still be hosting some of the GGB Podcasts we started 20 years ago and writing this column each month, so I’ll be hanging around for a while. But speaking recently with old friends in the industry made me realize that there is no one doc- umenting the incredible knowledge that they have acquired over the years. It’s a treasure trove that is slowly fading away. So while today’s industry is full of AI, algorithms and formulas, the industry of the past was all about personal relationships, respect for your customers and colleagues, and a genuine desire to entertain and delight. And for some reason, people seem to think these two ways to view the industry are not compatible. But I believe they are. One of the things I want to do in my semi- retirement is to create the Gaming Legacy Podcast, in which I will have conversations with the people who built the industry. I want to talk about how gaming was legalized in all those jurisdictions and whether it has fulfilled the promises they made. I want to discuss how customers reacted when you’d give them a surprise comp or they’d be upgraded to a suite. Let’s hear about how workers advanced in those days, how loyalty was earned and what events changed the industry. I want to invite people to appear on the pod- cast whose names you might recognize, such as Jack Binion, who developed the Horseshoe casinos; Lyle Berman, who was a pioneer in both tribal and riverboat gaming; and Bobby Baldwin, who stood side-by-side with Steve Wynn while building the Mirage empire. But I’d also like to talk with people whose names you might not know but hold a special depth of gaming knowledge—Roy Student, who developed the early players clubs, introduced serv- er-based gaming, and pushed non-gaming ameni- ties; Debi Nutton, recently inducted into the AGA’s Gaming Hall of Fame as the first female dice dealer in Las Vegas and a table games marvel; and Joe Fusco, one of the first three hires in the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, who helped develop the regulations that we are so familiar with today. So I’m going to let all the super qualified peo- ple in the gaming business look to the future and develop the marvelous systems, resorts and games that will entertain future casino guests, but with the Gaming Legacy Podcast, I’m going to remind you that the knowledge and experience of the peo- ple who came before you is still alive and well. Maybe someday some smart young executive will listen and be inspired by these truly great people who built this business. Remember this quote from George Orwell: “He who controls the past, controls the future.” What’s Past is Prologue BY ROGER GROS, PUBLISHER Global Gaming Business DECEMBER 2024 THEAGENDA Where others take small steps, we’re making Giant strides. There is no “good enough” for us. There is only “what more can we do?” We lie awake every night plotting our next moves, work every day to help our clients take things to the next level, and don’t stop until we know we’re delivering our best. Some would call it an unhealthy obsession. We say it’s playing to win. Contact chad@goodgiant.com to hear how we do it.6 Global Gaming Business DECEMBER 2024 BYTHENUMBERS VOTE ONCE, TRADE OFTEN O n October 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed a lower court’s ruling that allowed Kalshi, a New York-based derivatives exchange, to list its “yes/no” event contracts ahead of U.S. elections November 5. In the weeks that followed, the platform was flooded with elec- tion bettors to the extent that its mobile app reached the No. 1 spot on the “finance” list of Apple’s App Store and the No. 6 spot on the entire marketplace, ahead of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and others. All told, the exchange took in at least $700 million in contracts for this election cycle. At least $430 million was traded on the pres- idential race alone. These numbers ballooned quickly, as the total was approximately $15 million in mid-October and $250 million in the final days before the election. The accuracy of the market’s data was ultimately a feather in its cap. Donald Trump was a heavy favorite for weeks leading up to the elections, whereas most traditional polls listed Kamala Harris as a short favorite. T he October 2024 edition of the Eil- ers-Fantini Game Performance Re- port featured an operator poll with a total of 93 respondents, asking the question of whether game similarities are a determin- ing factor of how participants go about laying out their floors. Only 6 percent of respondents said that they will only place similar games to- gether on their floors, whereas 19 percent indicated that game similarities such as volatility, mechanics or brand are not a deciding factor for floor layouts. The lion’s share (75 percent) of par- ticipants confirmed that they at least make an attempt to pair similar games with each other on floors, but not always a strict adherence. To obtain a copy of any Eilers-Fantini report, contact Managing Director Rick Eckert at reckert@ekgamingllc.com. $ 700 MILLION amount wagered on U.S. election results YES NO IN SLOT FLOOR DESIGN, HOW IMPORTANT IS CONSIDERING THE SIMILARITY OF GAMES WHEN MAKING PLACEMENT ON YOUR FLOOR?8 Global Gaming Business DECEMBER 2024 CALENDAR “TheyIt” 5QUESTIONS S trive Gaming was formed in 2021 by former Kambi executives Max Meltzer and Damian Xuereb. The company features a platform for sports betting and iGaming, as well as other products. Strive has staff in Canada, the U.K. and Malta and focuses purely on serving the North American market. Meltzer has a mas- ter’s degree in law with a focus on U.S. and U.K. comparative law and IP law from Durham University. He sat down with GGBPublisher Roger Gros at G2E in Las Vegas in October. To hear and view a GGB Podcast of this interview, visit GGBMagazine.com. GGB: You have a great deal of experience in in the iGaming sector. Tell us what’s happened with Strive over the last three years. Meltzer:It’s been a wonderful ride since my co-founder Damian and I left Kambi just over three years ago and set up Strive Gaming. It’s been quite a great journey. We’ve got customers such as Golden Nugget, now owned by DraftKings, PointsBet and BetSafe in Ontario. We’ve also got Desert Diamond in Arizona, Four Winds, the tribal casino leaders In Michigan and various others. So it’s been very exciting as we continue to grow. What do you do for your clients? Fundamentally, we’re a player account management system—end to end. We also provide app devel- opment services and managed services in the form of customer payment risk and fraud agents. We fundamen- tally think that our PAM (player account management) technology, our modularized approach and our bonus rules engine, which is called the Infinity Engine, give us one of the leading platforms in the U.S. and Canada. How is your platform different than others? First of all, we are and were completely designed from the beginning to serve the North American customer base. There are a lot of older technologies out there that are kind of off the shelf from other jurisdic- tions. I don’t think it’s too disruptive to say that there are PAMs that were basically social casino-based. They are almost 20 years old, these tech stacks. What we’ve designed are very adaptable to the regulatory complexi- ties of going live in modern, multi-state requirements of each and every state that allows regulated sports bet- ting and/or iGaming since PASPA was repealed. During that time, particularly our first year, there were so many different regulations occurring while people were trying to quickly get to market. And that’s very diffi- cult to do with some of those old monolithic systems. Obviously, operators want their system to capture as much information from the player as possible. How do you do that? In essence, we have a very great-looking back end that’s a bit like the iTunes of the world. You have all of your customer information inside of it, but also the ease of the ability to integrate it with new content providers, geolocation providers, payment providers and others. And obviously, particularly for our customers that have casino licenses in the iGaming states, being able to quickly integrate and onboard casino customers with new content is really, really important. That’s not readily available with many other PAMs. And then training is a big part of our onboarding process. We have a training regime where we demon- strate how it works and then we kind of a train the trainer. One of the biggest value adds that Strive offers is that we actually try to offer any operational assistance, not just our managed services group. It adds value to provide more in the form of consultative and operational support alongside our managed services offering to operators, particularly tribal casinos. Do you have modules for responsible gaming as well? I think one of the greatest tool sets that we have is the Infinity Rules Engine. When you set it up appropriately from an operator perspective, you can actually identify player behaviors very quickly so you can try to rectify or address any issues that come up. We’re very proud of the fact that we are able to utilize that for responsible gaming as well. 1 2 3 4 5 Max Meltzer December 2-4: Thai Entertainment Complex Summit , Bangkok Marriott Hotel The Surawongse, Bangkok, Thailand. Produced by Winna Media. For more information, visit winnamedia.com. December 4: Global Regulatory Awards , Grand Connaught Rooms, London, U.K. Produced by Vixio. For more information, visit gamblingcomplianceawards.com. December 3-5: Certificate in Gaming Leadership , River Spirit Casino, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Produced by the OSU Spears School of Business. For more information, visit business.okstate.edu. December 9-11: Global Symposium on Racing , Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, Tucson, Arizona. Produced by the University of Arizona. For more information, visit rtip.arizona.edu. January 20-22: ICE Barcelona , Fira Barcelona Gran Via, Barcelona, Spain. Produced by Clarion Gaming. For more information, visit icegaming.com. February 23-25: SiGMA Eurasia , Dubai Festival City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Produced by SiGMA Group. For more information, visit sigma.world/eurasia. February 25-27: SBC Summit Rio, Riocentro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Produced by SBC Events. For more information, visit sbcevents.com/sbc-summit-rio. March 11-13: World Game Protection Conference , Rio Hotel Casino, Las Vegas. Produced by World Game Protection. For more information, visit WorldGameProtection.com March 12-13: NEXT Summit New York 2025 ,Con- vene, New York City, New York. Produced by NEXT.io. For more information, visit next.io/summits/newyork. March 31-April 3: Indian Gaming Tradeshow & Convention , San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, California. Produced by the Indian Gaming Association. For more information, visit indiangamingtradeshow.com.Next >