… with apologies to the great Willie Nelson. Our hejira has taken us in a week from Lexington, Virginia to Charlottesville, to Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina—all in the name of getting back to Augusta, Georgia, only to find a city devastated by Hurricane Helene. Never have we seen such destruction firsthand. (A state reeling from Helene’s wrath may finally be tractable to sports betting and maybe even casinos. We can but hope.) And yesterday we flew from Augusta to Las Vegas for this year’s installment of Global Gaming Expo. Above you see the surprisingly palatial press room at the Venetian Expo Center. We rate!
It’s very early on the first morning of G2E and there’s little as yet to report, although there’s already scuttlebutt about the “hostage video” that Light & Wonder CEO Matt Wilson cut to contain the damage from the Dragon Train debacle. He’s promising Dragon Train 2.0, which won’t play well with Aristocrat Technologies. Check-in at G2E was a bit ropey, what with two staffers standing around chatting while an overworked third did the actual checking in. But hey, after waiting eight days for Georgia Power to restore electricity (Internet is still out) to our regular office, it’s no sweat. Sighted in the press room: the winner of the Christopher Nolan lookalike contest, right down to the stubble.
We’re staying at the El Cortez (thank you, Kenny Epstein) and will endeavor to file dispatches on the vagaries of G2E. That is, when we’re not running from pillar to post. Welcome to the madhouse.