The Global Gaming Expo (G2E), held annually in Las Vegas since 2001 and produced by the American Gaming Association with Reed Exhibitions, is the largest gaming and gambling trade show in North America. G2E is where slot manufacturers, casino operators, sports betting platforms, and iGaming vendors compete for buyer attention across roughly 4 million square feet of booth space. Ten booth reveals and publicity moves that defined the show — with real cabinet names, real manufacturers, and real outcomes.
Aristocrat's Buffalo Grand cabinet — the anchor product debut
Aristocrat Technologies used G2E 2016 to unveil the Buffalo Grand cabinet, an evolution of its Buffalo slot franchise — the highest-grossing slot game in North American casino history. The Buffalo Grand booth featured a 4K curved wraparound display, buffalo-themed physical set dressing, and orders taken directly from casino operators on the show floor. Aristocrat's ability to convert G2E buzz into signed operator commitments defined how slot manufacturers still measure show success.
IGT's Wheel of Fortune celebrity activations
International Game Technology has used G2E multiple years to run Wheel of Fortune activations tied to its long-running slot franchise (over $3 billion in payouts by 2020). Pat Sajak and Vanna White have appeared in person at IGT's G2E booth on the strength of the license partnership with Sony Pictures Television — a genuinely rare celebrity appearance at a gaming trade show, and consistently a magnet for the show's trade press coverage in CDC Gaming Reports and Casino.org.
Konami's TMNT and Star Trek slot reveals
Konami Gaming has used G2E to unveil its licensed IP slots — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2019) and Star Trek: The Original Series (2018) — as booth centerpieces designed around the IP rather than the underlying cabinet. The strategy leans on Konami's dual identity as both a slot manufacturer and a video game publisher, giving the licensed slots pop-culture credibility that generic slot titles do not carry.
Light & Wonder's 2022 rebrand launch
Scientific Games rebranded to Light & Wonder at G2E 2022 in one of the most consequential brand-transition moments in gaming trade show history. The company had divested its lottery and sports betting businesses to focus on gaming content, and G2E was chosen as the venue to formally unveil the new identity — with a redesigned booth, new signature titles under the new name, and CEO Matt Wilson available for press across the three-day event. The transition strategy is now cited alongside Scientific Games' Bally-and-WMS acquisitions in industry M&A literature.
Everi Digital's iGaming pivot
Everi Holdings used its G2E 2022 and 2023 booths to communicate a strategic pivot from physical slot manufacturing and payment services (its historical core) into iGaming and interactive digital gaming. Everi's booth designed a physical-to-digital demo path that showed operators how existing Everi slot content would migrate to online casino platforms. The company's subsequent 2024 merger with International Game Technology's gaming and digital business was framed at least partially against the strategy Everi communicated at G2E.
Bally's post-Gamesys reveal
Bally's Corporation used G2E 2021 to introduce its post–Gamesys acquisition integrated identity — Bally's had acquired the UK-headquartered iGaming operator Gamesys in October 2021 for $2.7 billion. The G2E showcase paired physical Bally's casino property representation with Gamesys's iGaming platform, communicating operator-side scale that the pre-acquisition Bally's could not have claimed. G2E provided the physical stage for the strategic story.
DraftKings and FanDuel — the post-PASPA years
Following the 2018 Supreme Court decision striking down PASPA, DraftKings and FanDuel used G2E each year through 2021 to sign platform partnerships with newly regulated state casino operators. The trade press access made G2E the working venue for the industry's most consequential B2B contracts of the sports betting era. Coverage of DraftKings CEO Jason Robins and FanDuel CEO Amy Howe at G2E in Sports Business Journal, CDC Gaming Reports, and Legal Sports Report defined the news cycle around each show.
GameCo's skill-based slot experiment
GameCo, a skill-based gaming cabinet manufacturer, used G2E across several years (2016-2019) to publicize its Danger Arena and Nothin' But Net cabinets — an attempted structural innovation of skill-based gambling machines targeted at younger casino floor visitors. The category ultimately did not deliver the operator adoption GameCo forecast, and the company scaled down, but the G2E launches remain a case study in category-creation trade show PR that trade press revisits when new "skill-based" pitches surface.
PlayAGS's second-life iGaming positioning
PlayAGS has used G2E in recent years to reposition from a Class II tribal gaming supplier into a broader commercial casino and iGaming provider. The company's booth strategy consistently pairs its tribal-market franchises with newer online-casino content, communicating the horizontal expansion to buyers and to press covering the operator side of the industry.
Global Payments Gaming Solutions and the cashless-casino pitch
Global Payments Gaming Solutions (previously VisaCashless and now part of Global Payments' cashless casino initiative) has used G2E across 2022-2024 to communicate the industry's slow migration toward cashless slot and table gaming — a regulatory and operational shift that requires operator adoption at scale. G2E's role has been as the buyer-side venue where operators can compare cashless implementation approaches from Global Payments, Everi, and Konami side by side.
What the ten reveals share
G2E rewards trade show PR that maps to real B2B outcomes — signed operator contracts, new cabinet installations, category positioning that survives after the show closes. The booth is a stage, but the underlying discipline is closer to enterprise sales enablement than consumer marketing. Named executives available to press. Verifiable product debuts on the floor. Signed announcements timed to the show. And an emerging AI Citation Share reality: the trade press coverage of G2E (CDC Gaming Reports, Casino.org, Casino News Daily) is what teaches the AI engines who the leading manufacturers are. Being one of the manufacturers the AI names when an operator asks for slot supplier recommendations is the modern trade show outcome the industry now optimizes for.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
