Cashless gaming, mobile sports betting are big at 2021 Global Gaming Expo (G2E)

Will Anderson from EVERI gives a demo of their new Trilogy cashless gaming kiosk at G2E. (Jason Rzucidlo/AmericaJR)

Las Vegas — The Global Gaming Expo (G2E) returned to The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Cashless gaming and sports betting were big hits this year.

The annual event featured new slot machines, roulette wheels, keno ball machines, digital craps table games and even Baccarat. Mastercard announced a partnership with Sightline to create a credit card called Play+ that can be used for sports betting and gaming inside casinos.

Everi introduced me to their new cashless gaming system called Prelude. Guests can insert their credit or debit card into the machine and make a withdrawal for a play slip that can be used for slots or table games.

“This is the Prelude LC kiosk, it combines our loyalty functions and our payment cash access functions,” said Will Anderson, director of relationship marketing at Everi. “It’s two applications wrapped into one. You can do a standard credit card advance, a debit card cash advance and you can also purchase a gaming ticket using your debit card. Additionally, just to support responsible gaming functions, we do allow the patron to set a self-limit for their card. That limit is per day for the amount of time that they select.”

OddsOn Promotions debuted their new collect and win kiosk. Customers swipe their players card and receive a sticker to attach to a paper game board. After receiving a designated number of stickers, the guest will receive a prize.

“This allows your casino property to run its own Monopoly McDonald’s-themed game,“ said Chris Gardiner, business development manager at OddsOn Promotions. “The way it works is these kiosks will be setup at your property in any theme. A player would come up with their player club card, they would swipe and get to play a touchscreen game. Once they play the touchscreen game, they are going to receive a ticket from the kiosk. The ticket has a specially-printed sticker with the player’s information on it. They are looking to collect either symbols or letters. They would then be given their own map. If they collect an entire set, they win a prize provided by the casino.”

The new Circa Resort & Casino in downtown Las Vegas won the Best Property Award for North America at the Global Gaming Awards, which was held during G2E.

“I’m here with my team from Circa and it was great to win Resort of the Year,” said Derek Stevens, owner and CEO of Circa Resort & Casino. “It’s humbling and it’s great to have an opportunity to celebrate with our team. To win a pretty prestigious award like this is a pretty big deal for us. It’s great to see something like this in downtown Las Vegas. For me, it’s something that I’m very appreciative of and I’m really most proud of my team.”

Huffle Shuffle told me about their new live dealer Texas Hold’em card game. They described it to me as the worlds first.

“This is the first-of-its-kind live dealer Texas Hold’em platform,” said Cristobal Abreu, founder of HuffleShuffle Inc. “What you’re going to see is a live dealer, live players, all in a real time. A card gets placed in each individual player’s slot just like you would at a casino but online. The first player calls and the second player he checks. The dealer deals the flap. As you can see, everything is all live. This is the first of it’s kind.”

Snappy gave demos of their new loyalty card interface that allows guests to request their free promo gifts and have it shipped to their home or business address. No need to stand in a long line inside the casino anymore.

“Snappy is a gifting digital platform where we create a fun and easy experience for clients who are using to give gifts to their team members or casino guests,” said Nora Kosumi, sales director at Snappy App. “We have many ways of doing this. You can do it via text message, e-mail or you can send a unique code to the recipients. They basically go to that website with a customized message, get an array of gifts preselected by the sender, they pick the item that they like and have it shipped right to the address of their choice.”

Other winners at the 2021 Global Gaming Awards: