Power conference: Wynn, Adelson among headliners at Global Gaming Expo

Glyn Thomas, editor of Casino Life magazine, putts a golf ball into a roulette wheel during the G2E convention at Sands Expo Center on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013. The game was a booth promotion by Interblock, a developer of multiplayer gaming machines.

Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson are two of the biggest names in gaming, yet they've never given solo speeches at the industry's big convention on the Strip.

That's scheduled to change next week.

The two moguls are giving keynote addresses at the annual Global Gaming Expo, or G2E, the bulk of which will be held Tuesday through Thursday at the Sands Expo.

Wynn, the CEO of Wynn Resorts who just won approval to build a casino in the Boston area, speaks Tuesday. Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands, gives his address Wednesday.

Mike Johnson, industry vice president of Reed Exhibitions — which organizes G2E — said in a recent podcasted interview that conference organizers were simply listening to demand from previous attendees in welcoming Wynn and Adelson to the program.

“The request for this was really, really coming at us from all fronts from the audience,” he said in the podcast. “Access to the C-suite, particularly with these two gentlemen who don’t do a lot of these things at trade shows, was an overwhelming request.”

G2E gives attendees a chance to unveil new technology from their companies, dissect gaming issues at panel discussions and hear speeches from industry bigwigs such as Wynn and Adelson.

Johnson said the expo’s showroom floor would have about 9,000 more square feet of space than it did last year. Speaking to Roger Gros, publisher of Global Gaming Business, Johnson said the event had drawn 130 companies that have never been to G2E before, and he called it a “good sign of things to come” for the industry.

Here’s more on what you can expect to come out of the gaming expo.

Celebrity-inspired technology. The showroom floor allows companies to show off their newest and shiniest slot machines and games, and they’re often celebrity-themed.

Among this year’s lineup: two Ellen DeGeneres-themed slots from International Game Technology, a "Sons of Anarchy" slot from Aristocrat and a "Friends" game from Bally Technologies.

Online gaming. Nationwide, the industry still hasn’t figured out how to make online gaming a roaring success, but it hasn’t given up, either. Accordingly, it’ll be a big focus at G2E, as it has been before.

Many of the individual panels will be focused on some aspect of online gaming. Companies will be eager to share their newest online-focused products.

Free-to-play social games will be a prominent focus area, too.

“Both real money Internet gaming, as well as social casino gaming, both of those continue to be more important, especially on the social casino side for the vendors,” said Todd Eilers of Eilers Research. “I think you’ll continue to see them highlight that portion of the business a little bit more.”

"Mad Men." Yes, that "Mad Men." Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator, is speaking on a special panel to “discuss his success leveraging brand attributes across multiple platforms with wide demographic appeal,” according to the G2E website. Johnson said in the podcast that Weiner will touch on issues relevant to Millennials.

The description of his panel on G2E’s website offers some more details:

“Like the creative characters of Mad Men, Weiner knows how to entertain and inform consumers in ways that drive new business,” the description reads. “The successful branding of Mad Men as a slot machine is just one example of how brand equity can be used to success across a variety of channels.”

General industry introspection. This year, G2E organizers split the usual state of the industry panel discussion into two parts.

The first one, on Tuesday, will focus on operators — the casinos themselves. The second, on Wednesday, will focus on suppliers — the companies that make casino technology.

For suppliers, the conversation comes amid a lot of merger activity over the past year. Three major mergers were announced over the past few months alone: International Game Technology and Gtech, Bally Technologies and Scientific Games and, most recently, Global Cash Access and Multimedia Games.

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