Golden Knights and AGS announce partnership

AGS is the nation’s second-largest manufacturer of Class II slot machines used primarily in tribal jurisdictions. The partnership was announced on Monday, but the terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

It’s the first partnership between a gaming equipment manufacturer and a major-league sports team.

AGS will leverage this monumental corporate partnership, which allows AGS to sponsor the all-new "Play of the Game" feature at every Vegas Golden Knights home game on the videoboard, as part of its community outreach and employee engagement programs. The AGS Play of the Game will replay and highlight a key moment from each home game.

While the partnership will officially launch at the Global Gaming Expo trade show Oct. 9-11 in Las Vegas, pieces of it already were revealed at a preseason Knights game at T-Mobile Arena, where AGS has its brand tagline “Obsessed with the Game” on a scoreboard. The AGS “Play of the Game” will show a defining highlight of all 44 preseason and regular season home games as well as postseason playoff games on the massive video screen above center ice.

At G2E, the Knights will have the Golden Aces ambassadors team and mascot Chance the Gila monster at the AGS booth, which will feature a Vegas Golden Knights promotional-use slot machine in one of the company’s Big Red large-format cabinets.

Vegas Golden Knights President Kerry Bubolz said, "Adding the fastest-growing gaming equipment supplier to our roster of team partners is a big milestone for our organization and we couldn't be more thrilled about partnering with AGS. AGS has a renowned corporate culture and expanding global reach, enabling us to connect our brand to their employees and customers in Las Vegas, across the country, and around the world."

“We were attracted to AGS because of the similarities we’ve had, both on the ice and in the gaming sphere,” said Jim Frevola, senior vice president and chief sales officer of the Golden Knights. “We both kind of came out of nowhere and haven’t been around for very long, which was a neat quirk we liked between the two groups.”

The Knights, an expansion team in the 2017-18 season, weren’t given much of a chance for success in its inaugural year, yet won the Pacific Division and Western Conference championships en route to the Stanley Cup finals, where they lost to the Washington Capitals.

AGS also wasn’t given much of a chance when the company went public in January. But since its initial public offering, the stock price climbed 80 percent, closing Friday at $29.82 a share and has a 5 percent share of all shipped products. Since 2014, AGS has seen its revenue grow 250 percent and the number of games sold increase by 1,247 percent.

AGS President and Chief Executive Officer David Lopez said, "AGS employees have been huge Golden Knights fans from the team's inception, and we are excited to take our support and love for this team to another level as corporate partners, working together with the Golden Knights and other corporate partners such as Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts, Station Casinos, and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, to name a few, to truly demonstrate our mutual obsession with the game."

Lopez added, "Like the Las Vegas Golden Knights, we are 'Vegas-proud', with our worldwide headquarters in the Las Vegas Valley. And there are other similarities – we are relatively new players in the gaming supplier space and we have certainly been underestimated. Both AGS and the Golden Knights formed strong teams, came together quickly under a set of unique core values, and have never lost sight that winning is all about a cohesive team and character-driven culture."