Bwin.party co-CEO Jim Ryan will deliver a keynote address at the 2012 Global Gaming Expo (G2E) at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas on Oct. 3. (The full G2E runs Oct. 1-4.) Ryan’s address will (surprise!) focus on the rise and future potential of online gambling. Ryan follows in the footsteps of Caesars Entertainment’s Gary Loveman and MGM Resorts Jim Murren, who took to the podium at the past two G2E events.
In other Vegas conference news, Caesars Palace will host the 15th International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking (ICGRT) from May 27-31, 2013. The conference, which is put on every three years, has been held in Vegas on four previous occasions, but not since 2000. Recent years have seen the ICGRT making its home in Lake Tahoe, as well as international locations including Montreal and London. Around 300 people attended the 2009 event, at which 180 professional papers were presented on subjects ranging from problem gambling to the evolution of gaming technology. The Las Vegas Sun reports that a call for scholarly submissions for the 2013 event will be issued later this year.
The ICGRT’s organizers – the University of Nevada-Las Vegas’ Bo Bernhard and University of Nevada-Reno’s Bill Eadington – think Las Vegas should put more attention into hosting gaming conferences, in part to combat a perceived loss of influence to more lucrative gaming centers like Macau and Singapore. Bernhard cited the example of the oil industry, in which most of the actual drilling occurs outside America yet “most of the decisions in how the oil industry is run actually are made in Houston.” Bernhard believes Vegas’ history with cyclical boom and bust periods could prove instructive for other jurisdictions which have only recently opened up their gaming markets and whose experience is therefore limited to the upward trajectory. “When problems start emerging, the hope is you have a basis of research to address them, so you’re not just shooting from the hip.”
