Twenty-five years is a long time to be hosting an annual industry event, especially keeping the agenda fresh so that people keep coming back.
But that’s what Gaming Laboratories International has been able to achieve, once again hosting the GLI Roundtable for regulators, as well as operators and other industry stakeholders, this year scheduled for April 16-17 at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
The event typically features keynote speeches from industry leaders, panel discussions, and breakout sessions on topics like sports betting, iGaming, cybersecurity, and illegal gambling.
The “Innovation Tech Hub” is a popular feature, and this year will feature technologies from Bulletproof, IXUP, Kobetron, Marbles.io, and PokerLab.
The first event featured 30 regulators in a conference room in Denver, Colorado. The upcoming Las Vegas event will feature more than 300 attendees from all over the world.
According to Christie Eickelman, VP of Global Marketing, GLI, who’s been involved with the Roundtable since its beginning, GLI has never swayed away from the event’s core values.
“Our goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of new technology and concepts that are developed for the industry by suppliers and manufacturers, and present them from a technical point of view, keeping in mind that each jurisdiction has their own rules, regulations, technical standards and internal controls,” Eickelman says. “We do it from 30,000 feet, and we bring in subject matter experts to speak on each technology or each topic to give regulators the information they need.”
GLI surveys the regulators throughout the year to see “what’s really keeping them up at night,” what they’re dealing with, and what they want to hear about and build the agenda around that.
Every year they find half a room of new attendees.
“It’s a peer-to-peer event where regulators can attend a conference where there’s no sales pitch,” she says. “It’s based on what they are facing every day. We’ll look back at some of the technology that we spoke about at previous events, and then we’ll forward think on where it has evolved and where it’s going.”
One of the things that’s interesting – GLI’s Roundtable has grown from a traditional conference, in part by introducing different elements that are not core industry-specific, designed to bring in more of an entertainment or fun factor, such as the keynote speakers.
These are thought leaders delivering messages that resonate with industry people in the crowd.
The first keynote speaker was for the 2011 Roundtable – Rep. Dina Titus, a Professor of Political Science, UNLV and Member, United States Civil Rights Commission.
Speakers over the years have included Mark Eaton, NBA All-Star, motivational speaker and team building expert (2015); Lt. Colonel Kevin Sweeney (2016); Nate Silver, author and founder of FiveThirtyEight.com (2022), Jeffrey Ma, former VP of Analytics and Data Science for Twitter, predictive analytics expert for ESPN, Kingpin of the famous MIT Blackjack Team, and former vice president of Microsoft for Startups (2024); and Kerry Bubolz, President, Vegas Golden Knights of the NHL (2018).
Bubolz talked about teeing up a new business in a new city, especially challenging as head of an expansion NHL hockey franchise starting out in a warm weather market.
This year’s keynote speaker is Molly Bloom, author of Molly’s Game, known as the “Poker Princess” in the 2000s for organizing high-stakes underground poker games in L.A. that attracted A-List actors. That book was later turned into a movie starring Jessica Chastain.
There’s a 5K regulators fun run on April 16, with the usual breakfast and networking opportunities on the agenda.
There’s also an Innovation Tech Hub, both days, where regulators want to see the newest tech but in an educational way.
James Maida, President and CEO of GLI, and Mackenzie Haugh, Chief Delivery Officer at GLI, will head a panel discussion this year on the “Top 10 Trends in Tech”, to lead off a full two days of panel discussions featuring industry leaders. There are also breakout sessions where attendees can meet in smaller groups and talk about technology and other industry topics in more detail.
Bottom line: The GLI Roundtable gives regulators an opportunity to meet face to face, and, while networking, find out that the person next to you may be facing the same challenges.
“It’s fun to see people coming back, forming those deep and meaningful relationships. I’ve watched regulators attend all of them, who have retired. The way regulators have stood behind the event has been important to me. That has been fun to see.”
