The fourth and final day of G2E 2018 kicked off today at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas, a day we all long for as one week in Vegas with gambling industry professionals and friends tends to be a bit draining, to say the least! Despite the tired eyes and sore heads, there was decent activity on the expo floor today, a selection of sessions and even the odd celebrity we weren’t expecting.
Playtech takes the cake when it comes to elaborate iGaming industry booths at G2E 2018, with a full display of their casino and sports offerings for delegates, including a live demo of their brand new “Trivia Show Live” product each day at 2pm.
“We’re always looking at innovation and ways we can evolve the market and we noticed a trend in a different space for trivia apps where people can answer questions and win things, so we thought how can we bring this fun to gaming, especially to live”, Playtech’s Head of Product Marketing Henry McLean shared.
“So we’ve used our live studio in Riga and got a live presenter that will ask questions, people can attend for free and answer questions and win things like free spins in slots or golden chips for casino”, he said.
Just around the corner from Playtech’s display, we found Chubby Checker at a small booth just next to the Special Events Stage, the American rock ‘n roll star most recognized for his 1960 hit song “The Twist”. Chubby Checker was the recipient of “Casino Entertainer of the Year” at G2E’s Casino Entertainment Awards this week and was at G2E today to represent “Twisted Booking”.
“Twisted Booking is the exclusive agency for Chubby Checker and I think they have a hundred other acts and they are all named Chubby Checker, so if you want to get Chubby Checker go to Twisted Booking”, Chubby Checker told CalvinAyre.com.
“But its great to be in Vegas and its great to Casino Entertainer of the Year, I’m really excited and its nice being here and its just a good thing- it’s a good time of the year, a good time of my life to be doing this and to being with a fox like you”, he joked with a smile.
Today’s “The Future of eSports” session featured Paul Chamberlain, Chief Creative Officer at Allied eSports International, the man responsible for the management and growth of Allied’s existing property network. Allied’s Global Flagship property, the eSports Arena Las Vegas, opened up at the Luxor in March 2018 and Chamberlain revealed it has been a roaring success ever since.
“Its going fantastic. We’ve had a record breaking event, we had Ninja Vegas 18 there, which had over 668,000 peak streams and it is a broadcast and content production facility but its also an authentic eSports Gaming environment where we have families and kids coming in but we have events every night”, Chamberlain told CalvinAyre.com in an exclusive interview.
“So as I always say, months are years in eSports and years are decades and I think we’ve done pretty good for six months”, he said.
Today’s closing panel, “US Sports Betting – lessons learned from early adopters”, featured a line-up of senior experts in this space, including Charles Cohen of IGT. Cohen comes from a long history in the UK-based online gambling industry, making the move to San Francisco a year ago and now serving as the VP of Sports Betting for IGT.
According to Cohen, since the repeal of PASPA, things have been moving at lightening speed at IGT and he predicts nothing but positivity in the regulated American sports betting market from this point forward.
“I’ve got to tell you Becky, its been four or five months since PASPA was repealed and it feels like a decade ago”, Cohen shared.
“Whereas this time last year we were saying, well, if sports betting becomes regulated, maybe some casinos will be interested in it. Now, four months in, you can see this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity and I think that not long from now if you walk into a casino and there isn’t a sports book there, in pretty much any state in the union, people are going to wonder why not”, he said.