An official publication of Global Gaming Expo

SEPTEMBER 2002 

EDITORIAL

The Year That Was

By Charles Anderer, Publisher

The fall gaming show is here, and one question stands out: How could the coming year possibly be filled with more dramatic change than the 12 months just past?

The question is particularly germane to the American market. Pollster Peter Hart, speaking at the Southern Gaming Summit earlier this year, said the past year will be remembered as the time when Americans lost faith in their institutions. The U.S. government failed to protect its citizens on 9-11, Wall Street failed to tell investors when to buy and when to sell, and the Catholic Church, a faith that numbers more than a billion adherents worldwide, was revealed to have spent years concealing known child abusers from public view. 

His basic point: Business is entering a new era in terms of its relationships with employees and communities. In all probability, it means conventional spin tactics (i.e., avoiding tough questions about the impact your product has on your customers, explaining layoffs in the name of shareholder value, rationalizing the ever-widening gap between CEO pay and that of the rank and file) are henceforth going to be received with more skepticism than most of us can presently imagine.

How the gaming industry (or any business) handles such delicate matters will go far toward determining its future success. In the area of corporate governance, the gaming industry actually has some built-in advantages. Highly regulated publicly held gaming companies are models of financial transparency. Top gaming CEOs are mere bench players in the Great American Grotesquerie otherwise known as the CEO Pay Derby. The Nevada CEOs who were pilloried for collecting million-dollar bonuses last year must look at the $700 million-plus payout to Gary Winnick (CEO of Global Crossing) and the $400 million-plus payout to Ken Lay (you know who he is) and shake their heads in wonder.

That doesn’t excuse the general clumsiness with which last year’s layoffs were handled. To outsiders, Las Vegas may seem like a rootless place, with all its comings and goings. In practice, it is the world’s biggest company town. Its full-time residents know the big companies and their key players by name.

In Las Vegas it’s almost as if, lacking any major league teams, the portion of the American brain that is normally occupied by sports trivia is filled with monthly gaming revenues, visitor volumes and, most recently, CEO pay packages. In a service-driven business, where success is measured by the quality of millions of interactions between employees and customers, the appearance of fairness is ignored at one’s peril.

The past year has not lacked for dramatics at our own humble station here at GEM Communications. We are in the process of completing the first year of the post-World Gaming Congress phase of our existence. Since completing the sale of our World Gaming-related assets to Reed Exhibition Cos. and the American Gaming Association, organizers of this month’s Global Gaming Expo, we have moved forward on a number of important fronts.

Casino Journal and Slot Manager are now the official publications of the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers (AGEM) and the Gaming Standards Association (GSA) respectively. Indian Gaming Business has just completed its first year as the official publication of the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA). We produced the first ever New York Gaming Summit in April, and we have joined forces with the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program and the Annual Racing Symposium to produce the first ever Racing & Gaming Summit this December.

We are also proud to have our publications counted among the official publications of G2E. After being on the outside of last year’s “by the industry, for the industry” equation, we have jumped in with both feet. And there we will be, for many, many years to come.

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