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GGB May 2024 •Vol. 23 •No. 5•$10 Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers RESPONSIBLE GAMING ONLINE SUCCESSFUL SLOT SYSTEMS MARKETING MADNESS INFLUENCER BRIAN CHRISTOPHER Asian Opportunity casino projects bring spectacular vision to the city EuroCentric How the European Casino Association represents its membersVol. 23 • No. 5 COLUMNS CONTENTS 10 Strong Start 12 Diamonds in the Rough 4 The Agenda 6 By the Numbers 8 5 Questions 13 AGEM 41 Frankly Speaking 42 New Game Review 44 Emerging Leaders 47 Cutting Edge 50 Goods & Services 53 People 54 Casino Communications DEPARTMENTS may 3 COVER STORY Global Gaming Business Magazine The Big Apple As the state of New York continues its slow journey toward licensing three downstate casinos, 11 potential bidders for resort casinos in and around New York City promote their projects to local communi- ties. Here’s a rundown of the New York casino proposals. FEATURES 14 Vietnam’s Promise The resort casinos of Vietnam continue to thrive, but allowing local citizens to gamble would help them reach their full potential. 26 Responsible iGaming The growth of online casinos and mobile sports betting has required renewed focus on responsible gaming among all stakeholders. 30 Digital Dimension The arrival of a younger demographic thanks to sports betting and online gaming means operators must be fluent in the digital communications these play- ers expect. 34 Europe’s Champion The European Casino Association represents two decades of promoting and supporting the casinos of Europe, and its membership is still growing. 38 Systemic Changes Casino management systems are evolving into sophisticated tools allowing casinos to mar- ket to their players in real time. 48 Slots at IGA The industry’s slot suppliers used the Indian Gaming Tradeshow as a showcase for their latest products. MAY 2024 www.ggbmagazine.com4 Vol. 23 • No. 5 • MAY 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 Contributing Editors Alan Campbell |Julia Carcamo |Muhammed Cohen Allison McCoy |Marjorie Preston | Bill Sokolic ______________ • • • • • • • • • • • • • Official Publication O ver the last month or so, I’ve had the occa- sion to catch up with many of my friends who I’ve known throughout my 40-plus years in the business. We reminisce about the old days, talk about the giants of the industry who are no longer with us, and often gripe about the “corporati- zation” of the casino business. One of my goals as I step back from my day-to- day responsibilities of GGBis to do a series of pod- casts with the giants of the industry who are still with us. I’m hoping these programs will demonstrate how we got to where we are today and to possibly draw a pathway towards the future. Because there are many of us dinosaurs still around, I think these podcasts can be informative as well as being entertaining. I hope I don’t sound like the old man on the porch yelling at the kids to get off his lawn, because that’s not my intention at all. Infact, when we started our 40 Under 40 pro- gram a dozen years or so ago, that was designed to showcase the young talent in the industry, because we do have some remarkable young people who are help- ing to build the next stage of gaming. I can’t pretend that I invented this concept of honoring young talent. I actually copied it from a similar program that was published by the late, lamented Atlantic Citymaga- zine, where I interned when I was in my late 20s. One year, the publisher, Fran Freedman, assigned me to work on the 40 Under 40 feature and I found it very enlightening and exciting to meet so many of my colleagues in the Boardwalk marketplace. At that age, I was just a dealer at Caesars Atlantic City and enjoyed talking to people who were on their way to a career, while I was working what I considered to be a menial job with little chance of advancement. In a year or two, however, I was able to connect with the publisher of Casino Journal, Glenn Fine, and I found my real calling. A year or two after starting our own 40 Under 40, we connected with The Innovation Group and its then-CEO Steve Rittvo, who had started a similar program called the Emerging Leaders of Gaming. Together, the merged 40 Under 40/Emerging Leaders of Gaming has become the most prestigious award for people of that age group, and the “graduates” have quickly become the leaders of the industry. For young people just starting out in the indus- try, it can be a harsh and unwelcoming place. Entry- level workers often get frustrated, as I was as a dealer, and sometimes give up. That’s not necessary if you can find the support that our program offers, not to mention other groups like Global Gaming Women (see our interview with GGW Executive Director Lauren Bates on the back page of this magazine) that are rising to the occasion and standing up for young women and men in the workplace. This month marks the launch of the 2025 ver- sion of 40 Under 40/Emerging Leaders of Gaming. Last year, we had almost 200 nominations for the 40 available positions, and the choices were difficult to say the least, because there were so many worthy and talented individuals to consider. The criteria are pretty wide open. If you are 40 or under during 2025, you are eligible. You can nominate someone within your organization, or if you feel your career path is notable, you can nominate yourself. We’ve set up an advisory committee to consider the nominees, made up of some of the smartest peo- ple in the business, including such people as Justin Carter, senior vice president, regional operations, Penn Entertainment; Kirsten Clark, executive director, International Association of Gaming Advisors (IAGA); Alex Dixon, president & CEO, Q Casino and DRA; Daron Dorsey, executive director, Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers (AGEM); Alan Feldman, distinguished fellow in responsible gaming, International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada Las Vegas; and Sheila Morago, COO and partner, Trilogy Group. We’ll be adding to that distin- guished list for this year’s process. Each nominee gets to be profiled within the pages of this magazine throughout the year, includ- ing this month’s honorees on pages 42 and 43, and is included in various programs and publications issued by The Innovation Group. To nominate someone or yourself, it’s simple. Just go to ggbmagazine.com/40- under-40 and fill out the application form. I’m always astounded by the quality of the nom- inees and the wide variety of disciplines they repre- sent. From the land-based casino world to online gaming, to the legal and regulatory field, there are many areas we like to address in our list each year. Know someone who you believe will become a leader of gaming—a new “giant” of the business? Please take the time to recognize them and their place in our world. Coming & Going BY ROGER GROS, PUBLISHER Global Gaming Business MAY 2024 GGB THEAGENDA This is a giant headline. We made it as big as possible so you’d read these much smaller words. You see, this ad is a metaphor about us. All the benefits of being a large agency like depth of talent, vast resources and gaming experience, coupled with the scrappiness of a small shop. It works. Just like this ad did. Email chad@goodgiant.com to learn how we do it.6 Global Gaming Business MAY 2024 inside Baseball, Outside the law I n recent weeks, controversy and speculation have exploded around Japanese MLB star Shohei Ohtani and his former inter- preter, Ippei Mizuhara, after it was revealed that Mizuhara had been gambling with an illegal bookmaker based in California for several years and was embezzling funds from Ohtani to pay for his mounting losses. As of this writing, Mizuhara is charged with federal bank fraud and allegedly stole some $16 million from Ohtani. An affidavit from federal prosecutors shed light on the inter- preter’s betting habits, and said that from December 2021 to Jan- uary 2024, he placed a total of about 19,000 bets, or an average of about 25 per day. These bets ranged in value from $10 all the way up to $160,000, for an average of about $12,800 per bet. Overall, his winnings were said to have totaled $142.25 million, while his losses amounted to $182.9 million, resulting in total debts of $40.67 million. BYTHENUMBERS K ambi’s 2024 Tribal Sports Betting Report featured a variety of trends and insights using 2023 data from the company’s network of nine North American tribal partners. The report included a breakdown of retail and online bettors’ spending patterns after a winning bet was recorded—overall, the vast majority of winnings were reinvested into other bets within 24 hours. This was especially true for online bettors, as 94 percent of winning mobile bets were reinvested within that time frame. Surprisingly, 62 percent of those reinvestments happened within one to 10 minutes after the previous bet. Land-based results were slightly lower, as 77 percent of those winning bets were redirected into new wagers in a day’s time, with 48 percent happening within one to 10 minutes. Kambi also noted that the overall handle for the company’s tribal partner network grew a total of 128 percent year-over-year 2022-2023. To obtain a copy of the full report, visit kambi.com. Retail And Online Bettors’ Spending Patterns After Wins WINS = $142,256,000 LOSSES = $182,935,000 -$40,679,000 • About 19,000 bets • Average of about 25 bets per day • From $10 all the way up to $160,000, for an average of about $12,800 per bet Ippei Mizuhara Shohei Ohtani8 Global Gaming Business MAY 2024 CALENDAR “TheyIt” 5QUESTIONS B rian Christopher is the best of the new breed of influencers taking social media to new levels. Through his BC Slots YouTube page and on Facebook and other social media, he has millions of followers and hundreds of thousand subscribers, who tune in to live-streaming sessions on his favorite slots. Christopher is now the world’s largest casino influencer, with a community flocking to special game launches, a designated Brian Christopher Slots section at the Plaza in Las Vegas, the “Brian Christopher Pop’n Pays” slot machine, special BC cruises, slot tournaments, and more, capturing the attention of slot enthusiasts and slot suppliers alike. He has nearly 650,000 YouTube subscribers and nearly 500 million views. He spoke with GGB Editor Frank Legato at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, prior to his hosting the 2024 EKG Slot Awards. To hear and see a podcast of this interview, visit GGBMagazine.com. Your millions of followers and subscribers look to you for game suggestions, and manu- facturers now count on you as part of their marketing plan. Tell us how you got here, starting with the first time you ever made a video of yourself playing a slot machine. Christopher: It was totally by mistake. This was never supposed to be a career. I came to Las Vegas for the very first time, and I had seen other people put out these videos of themselves playing a little bit, and I thought I could do that too. And those videos took off. I literally did not look back, and it turned into something much bigger than I ever could have imagined. You encountered a lot of resistance from many places at first. How long did it take be- fore casinos began to embrace this livestream slot game as a good way to market their properties? It’s still taking some of them some time to get used to this whole idea. Some of them still will not let you take a photograph on the casino floor for some reason. But at around the nine-month to one-year mark, I had my first casino reach out that wanted to work with me. We did a joint project, a Brian Christopher slot tournament that brought in hundreds. That really woke the industry up a bit. How many people watch you play now? We just passed over 1 billion views. The majority of the people that watch are actually not sub- scribers, but we have about 1.8 million subscribers now. You’ve worked with slot manufacturers to promote specific new games through your livestreams. Do they approach you or do you approach them? Typically, they come to me and say, ‘Hey, Brian, we have a new slot machine coming out.’ Our schedule’s so busy; we’re 100 percent booked for the whole of 2024. We can still make some things happen, al- though it’s a little tough. But we do have a few world premieres coming up in the next few months that I’ve been asked to promote. Your business is thriving, from the YouTube channel to ad revenue, merchandising sales and special events. Where do you go from here? We have so many things that are in the works. We’ve just started fliptheswitch.com, which is promoting responsible gaming and demystifying everything to do with slots and gambling. We’re working hard on that one. And we want to take our newest YouTube channel, BC Slots, further and reach a larger audi- ence. Maybe next, we will reach into the TV sets or in the streaming world. Maybe we’ll come up with more slot machines. We’ve only got one so far. It’s been a year and a half, and I’m itching for another one. But we are quite busy, and every day we’re getting reached out to from other players that want us to do more things. And it’s really a great spot to be in—it’s hard to pick and choose what you want to do, be- cause you’ve got to make sure you have a little bit of time left to do other things. 1 2 3 4 5 Brian Christopher June 3-5: SiGMA Asia , SMX Convention Center, Manila, Philippines. Produced by SiGMA Group. For more information, visit sigma.world. June 4-6: G2E Asia 2024, The Venetian Macao, Macau, SAR. Produced by Reed Exhibitions. For more information, visit g2easia.com. June 18-20: Canadian Gaming Summit , Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto, Canada. Produced by SBC Events. For more information, visit sbcevents.com. July 16-19: iGB L!VE 2024 , RAI Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Produced by Clarion Gaming. For more information, visit igblive.com. July 17-20: National Council of Legislators from Gaming States Summer Meeting , Rivers Casino, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Produced by Spectrum Gaming Group. For more information, visit nclgs.org. August 12-14: Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association (OIGA) Conference and Tradeshow , Oklahoma City Convention Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Produced by OIGA. For more information, visit oiga.org. October 7-10: Global Gaming Expo (G2E), The Venetian Expo, Las Vegas, Nevada. Produced by Reed Exhibitions. For more information, visit globalgamingexpo.com. November 27-28: Eastern European Gaming Summit, Inter Expo Center, Sofia, Bulgaria. Produced by the Association of Gaming Industry in Bulgaria. For more information, visit eegamingsummit.com.POWER UP YOUR FLOOR PERFORMANCE Winner after premium winner – the hype is real! Our test bank numbers for Tiger and Dragon are smashing records. Innovative gameplay mixes seamlessly with groundbreaking game mechanics - get this summer’s blockbuster on your floor today. 2024 IGT. The trademarks and/or service marks used herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of IGT, its affiliates or its licensors.Next >