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Casino Executive: One Too Many Trade Shows

LAS VEGAS, Nevada – Oct. 19, 2001 -- The foot traffic was better than expected.

But nothing great.

Passers-by stopped to check new slot games.

But few were key decision-makers.

All in all, this week's World Gaming Congress trade show lacked the oomph of the competing Global Gaming Expo held last month, a top casino industry executive said Friday.

"It was a little bit better than we thought it would be," Alliance Gaming President Bob Miodunski said, striking a somewhat disappointed tone.

His company's Bally slot machines were displayed at both Las Vegas events, with Alliance executives selling 500 to 700 games at the casino industry-run Global Gaming Expo, or G2E.

They sold about 100 at the World Gaming Congress, which is operated by trade magazine publisher Gem Communications.

"I think you have to look at the quality of the people who came," Miodunski said, implying that G2E drew a better crowd of checkbook-carrying decision makers.

The competing shows were the product of a split between Gem executives and casino industry bosses led by their chief Capitol Hill lobbyist, Frank Fahrenkopf, who heads the American Gaming Association.

The former Republican Party chairman and his membership wanted greater control of World Gaming, which for nearly two decades was the key trade show for the casino industry.

It was the place where new products were launched, sales contacts were made, high-powered executives struck up new relationships.

But Gem and Fahrenkopf failed to reach an agreement, and the second show was born amid a flood of competing news releases, with each organization touting its own offering as the biggest, the best, the most important.

Earlier this week, a half-page ad in the Review-Journal appeared on behalf of the G2E and belittled the Gaming Congress.

"Here For The Gaming Show?" the ad read. "You Missed It."

For company's like Alliance Gaming, the contentious split meant they had to set-up and staff displays for two shows, diverting valuable resources from day-to-day operations.

But Miodunski felt he had no choice.

Unlike executives of Reno-based slotmaker International Game Technology, whose company controls nearly two-thirds of the slot machines on U.S. casino floors and only attended G2E, Alliance Gaming is battling to carve out a sizable niche after flailing about throughout much of the 1990s.

Miodunski assumed control of the company nearly two years ago along with Chief Financial Officer Bob Saxton, and the pair have engineered a dramatic transformation of Alliance's fortunes.

Trading as low as $1.16 in May 2000, the company's shares closed Friday at $16, as a series of new video-driven slots have been introduced, producing quarterly earnings for the company that not so long ago knew quarterly losses.

The company hawked 32 new games at the shows, with the company's Ray Charles slot machine its most touted.

Much like International Game Technology's three-year-old Elvis slot game, the Ray Charles machines tie slots to the image of an American music icon.

Miodunski knows that U.S. casino operators are expected this year to replace about 20 percent of the 600,000 slot machines on their floors.

So there he was Friday at the Sands Expo Center showing his company's newest games to potential customers, a practice that he and his employees don't mind doing once a year.

But twice in one month?

"We don't want to attend two shows," Miodunski lamented.

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