“Latin America as a whole is a very strategic customer base for Bally”

What was this Customer Panel about?
This was our first Latin American customer panel. We´ve been starting customer panels around the world now for more than a year or a little longer and the purpose of this event is to interact with our customer base, to learn what their business needs are, to see how casinos customer are evolving and changing. And we take that knowledge and information and we obviously integrate the thoughts and ideas of the leaders with Latin American gaming community in to our product plan.

So what we do during the day is ask them questions about what they see and what trends they see so we can make sure that we are building and designing entertaining games that people wants to play. This kind of feedback we found is fundamental for our long-term success and if we don’t develop games with the background we see thew input of lot of individuals and experts in the region as we see obviously games performance is different around the world, how one game works in one place can be very different in another place; that’s the point of today’s section.

Why did you decide to hold it in Latin America for the first time?
Latina America as a whole is a very strategic customer base for us. Not just Argentina, but the entire region from Mexico all the way down. But Buenos Aires is like our Latin American base- we have another offices in Latin America but this is kind of our headquarters. So, what better place than Buenos Aires?

How was the feedback?
It was great, a lot of interesting discussion went on about trends in industry and what we are seeing. It's really about working together to try to capture new demographics and new players bases to expand the reach of gaming beyond what it is today.

What was the main issue?
I don’t know if we can say there was a single issue- for us it was on educating customers on our protocol maps and strategy, and for the customers to share with Bally their thoughts about trends and what I can call micro- and macro economics factors affecting the gaming industry.

What do you think about the Argentine market?
For us it has seen lots of ups and downs over the years- probably not too different to a lot of another industries that do business in Argentina. As a manufacturer and provider of gaming equipment we have been struggling with the importation process here and the number of innovative products that we can bring into this market Is very limited Certainly, we think that there’s a gap because we have been developing a lot of really good products that operators are excited to have but and in many cases we have been struggling to find ways to bring them into the country. So we feel there´s a technology gap within the country of Argentina, and should the import restriction either change or be modified, there is certainly a lot capacity to absorb new technology in the casino segment.

Are you leaving Argentina with new ideas?
Absolutely. In fact, we couldn’t be more pleased. Often, it happens that you can never know what kind of interaction you are going to have with people, you invite them when you are not sure about their feelings or thoughts, or whether or not they are going to share or not but we have a fantastic interaction- even in debates without

Bally speaking. Our operators had great interaction with their colleagues. I think these kinds of events are what makes the industry grow.

What are the main concerns of customers?
No different to any other business. They are looking to grow; find new people to visit their locations. We spent a lot of time discussing what time of product the casino of the future will need. They want to find a way to grow and innovate.