What sort of customer feedback have you received post-merger? There’s still a lot of work going on with the merger and IGT and GTECH remain on target to close the transaction in the 1st Half of Calendar 2025. On January 2, 2025 we announced that our shareholders will vote on the merger agreement on Feb. 10.

The merger is subject to certain closing conditions, including the approval of a majority of the outstanding shares of IGT’s common stock and the receipt of required gaming approvals. The complimentary nature of IGT and GTECH, the benefits this will bring in terms of scale, reach, investment and market offerings has been very well received. The combined company will give customers access to one of the most extensive product portfolios in the world, across games, systems, cabinets, services and online offerings. It’s fair to say that access to a single supplier that can give them this market-leading portfolio is something our customers are quite thrilled with.

The ‘IGT ICE Totally Gaming Study Tour 2025’ is an intriguing initiative, can you provide readers details on this engaging gaming industry experience. The IGT 2025 Gaming Study Tour is an initiative driven out of our Australian organisation. It provides a unique opportunity for operators to experience more than just the normal activities that surround the International Casino Expo, with additional tailored tours, meetings and access to other areas that would not normally be available without the benefit of IGT and their exceptional customer relationships and access to what would normally be unavailable to any individual operator. This year at ICE, IGT will be hosting an unrivalled interface opportunity with suppliers, operators and regulators from all over the globe. There is no opportunity like it. After London, on return home via South Africa - Visiting Sun City and Cape Town with their variety of casinos and features, including the world famous Pilansberg Game Reserve. This tour will offer experiences our operators won’t find anywhere else.

Earlier this year it was announced that IGT will launch the new tokidoki-themed games for the Asian markets for 2025 are those plans still on track and can you provide any further details on the games? Over the past few years, we’ve invested heavily in building games for the specific characteristics of the Asian market – games built from the ground up for that market, rather than just theming American or European base games. In addition to this, where we have themes elsewhere in the world that appeal to Asian markets, we’ll look at building those anew with gameplay for the Asian market. tokidoki is a Japanese-inspired global lifestyle brand, and we identify Asia as one of many markets where this game can be successful.

What predictions can you make about the future of the EMEA market, and what is IGT’s role in that future? In the course of 2025, a gradual strengthening of economic activity is expected and growth is projected to rise further in 2016. All EU countries are set to register positive growth in 2025 and 2016.

Casinos across Europe continue to be impacted by the challenges of the current economic climate and from competition from online rivals and slot arcades. We continue to monitor the various projects and expansions across the Casino & Lottery space, and the combined IGT/GTECH company once merged, will be a formidable force and will continue to focus on ensuring that we continue to excel in customer service and provide compelling innovation to all our current and prospective customers.

The company often talks about "culturally-enhanced games". What is the research involved in creating “culturally-enhanced games”? It’s actually a combination of research, experience and regional knowledge. With over 30 years’ experience in developing games, we have built up an inherent understanding of the key elements that makes games work. We have game developers from and based around the world, so they bring with them a wealth of cultural knowledge that feeds into the game development process. Finally, our research teams assess markets and local market dynamics. We look at the player types – assessing elements like their preferred type of game play and player demographics. We also look at cultural changes in those markets – are there cultural changes or preferences that can drive game theming, sounds, colours etc. When you combine all these elements together with the right math that resonates with players in the region, you develop and evolve games to being ‘culturally enhanced’

How do you make IGT products stand out from the crowd, especially in such a highly-competitive industry? At the end of the day, it’s all about engaging the player; giving them the game play and thrills their looking for in their slot-play. We invest heavily in building a library of games that appeal to all player types – a wide variety of themes, bonus styles, volatility mechanics, sound and more. Beyond this, with a portfolio that not only helps players engage wherever they are (with our online, mobile and social portfolio), we also invest in helping the operator make the most of their investments. Our range of back-end systems, customer services and access to the biggest game library in the industry mean that operators can operate more efficiently and effectively whilst offering their players more. It’s this wealth of market focussed offerings from a single vendor that really keeps customers coming back to IGT.

Are there developments beyond 2025 in the works that IGT is excited about? What can you tell us about these developments, what they mean for IGT, and what impact they could have on the relevant markets? IGT has become synonymous with innovation and celebrated for a central focus on creating engaging content. What can we expect to see from IGT at ICE Totally Gaming 2025?
In many ways, we have gone back to basics and looked at the key things that make customers want to play our games. We’ve got a remarkable range of new core games that we’ll be showcasing; games that, from the underlying math models, through the bonusing, payouts and ultimately themeing, appeal to the full range of players in the market. Some old favourites have been revamped and are making a comeback. But most excitedly of all will be the launch of 2 new cabinets.

We will have the International debut of our S3000 stepper cabinet, that was unveiled in G2E – this cabinet will really bring the stepper game into the video age, and it’s not an overstatement to say with this cabinet, that ‘seeing is believing’. We also have a new video cabinet that will have its world debut at ICE. As with the S3000, our new cabinet has been designed from scratch with the player in mind – giving them a more comfortable, engaging and immersive gameplay experience.

And finally what are the company’s main goals for 2025 – Well as you can imagine, 2025 is all about creating the world’s most compelling end-to-end gaming solutions provider. We are on track to complete our merger agreement with GTECH in the first half of the 2025 calendar year.

Big pay-outs have been a regular occurrence throughout 2014 with millionaires and involved one weekend in Feb where over $4 million was paid out to 3 slot winners! What are amongst the stand out features of IGT Slots that make them so popular with players World Wide? When you look at jackpot pay-outs, the key with IGT, is that our machines pay-out more frequently. Players notice this and that why they play them more often.

To date, our MegaJackpot series of games have paid out nearly $6 billion, created over 1,500 millionaires and we’ve paid out the largest ever jackpot to a single player - $39.7 million! On average, with an IGT Megajackpot game, a jackpot is awarded every 21 hours with a $1 million+ jackpot paid out on average, every 5 days.

How is IGT game development integration progressing in with mainstream gaming levels of interaction?

Have you a favourite game ? Everytime, I find a game I love, our development whiz kids show me something else, and that soon becomes my favourite. However, at the moment, the sheer visual uniqueness of tokidoki is the one I’m drawn to more and more often.

Does IGT work with Casino operations on providing Slot Tournaments? Yes. Our Tournament Manager product is one of the market’s most versatile products for running tournaments. It’s deployed in a multitude of operators around the world and our product specialists are on hand to not only help with the deployment and running of the product but, with their experience in tournaments, have assisted operators set-up and run tournaments in their venues. The team’s many years’ experience in running tournaments is a highly valuable addition to our customers, especially those new to the world of tournaments, as we can help customers deploy highly successful tournaments form the outset.

Not all Casinos host Slot tournaments so what would be your advice for those who would like to participate in a Slot Tournament? Firstly, get yourself an appropriate slot management system such as IGT’s Tournament Manager. Whilst tournaments can be run ‘off paper’, for it to be successful, you’d really benefit from the added support of a management system. Aside from removing any ambiguity with play times and results, a good system will provide a range of elements that will make running the tournament, easy and very engaging to the players and audiences.

Once that’s done, don’t be shy about telling customers about the tournament… the more vocal you are, the more players you’ll get (and that’s the key point) , and don’t limit this to your current slot players. If you have table games, include those players. You’ll be amazed, when run well, how many people get a thrill from participating in a slot tournament.

Lastly, when you host your tournament, make an event out of it. You want the participants to feel like they’re part of something special and you want any audiences around to get engaged and help build up the sort of atmosphere you’d get in any other competitive environment.