"This may have been the busiest G2E for JCM ever"

Was G2E 2018 worth the effort? What kind of feedback have you gotten from visitors at your stand?

G2E 2018 was a fantastic show for JCM. This may have been the busiest show for JCM ever, and in addition to our core product of bill validators and printers, attendees were very excited to hear about our advanced technology that helps operators make a plan for sports betting implementation today and tomorrow. Before the US Supreme Court’s PASPA ruling and in the weeks after, we had many in-depth discussions with our US customers who were facing a dilemma – how do you reconfigure the slot floor to accommodate a sports betting area without a huge investment in infrastructure? One answer we have been working with customers on is using our line of digital displays to quickly create areas where they can showcase sports on high-def screens when the games are on, and then use those same screens for another purpose when the games are not on. For example, operators can easily make an existing lounge or nightclub a sports area by adding digital displays. Then, when the sports are over for the day, use those same displays to create a nightclub experience like none other. That’s the “today” answer. The “tomorrow” solution is our FUZION technology, which was granted a patent just before G2E, and has since gone to GLI for testing and certification. With FUZION, the operator can avoid the expanse of creating a sports betting desk by enabling sports betting and fantasy sports betting right at the slot machine. A player simply uses their mobile phone and the casino’s app, and now they can use their slot credits to wager on any game the app is showing. A near-field connection links the slot and the player’s phone, and instantly disconnects when the player moves out of range. FUZION is also ready to help operators vend and redeem lottery tickets at the slot in jurisdictions with a lottery. The feedback from existing customers and from potential new customers to our today-and-tomorrow approach to sports betting was overwhelmingly positive.

What is your post trade show follow-up plan?

We have a lot of work to do in follow up with customers, both in terms of fulfilling the many orders we wrote at the show and in follow up in visiting customers’ casino floor and mapping out the best possible plan for digital displays and for the potential for a FUZION deployment.

How do you assess this year for JCM? How did you grow? What impact is the company making?

2018 was an incredible year for JCM in every region – EMEA, APAC, LatAm, and North America. Operators in EMEA continue to invest in our iVIZION, GEN5, and Ticket2Go products; in APAC, our UBA has been very successful as Australia rolled out its new currencies, and iVIZION continues to lead in Macau and other markets; LatAm operators are increasingly moving toward the highly secure iVIZION and the flexible power of GEN5; and our core product and digital displays are equally popular lines of product in North America. In fact, during the show, we were thrilled to announce an exclusive master supply agreement with Eldorado Resorts, Inc., under which we will provide our bill validators and printers for all 26 Eldorado gaming properties in the U.S.

How big could US online gaming and sports betting market be for JCM? What can we expect?

Online gaming isn’t a factor for JCM because our solutions are created for land-based operators. However, as we have mentioned, the land-based sport betting opportunities in the U.S. and around the world are very strong. The combination of digital displays helping operators bring the visual excitement of sports to their floors today, and then being able to expand the sports betting opportunity by making every slot machine a total gaming kiosk tomorrow with FUZION makes this a very exciting time to work at JCM.