EXIT INTERVIEW :
Marcus Prater ,
Executive Director , Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers
Marcus Prater is retiring after 14 years as executive director at the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers . During his tenure , he brought renewed focus on the importance of the equipment used in the gaming industry and how the revenue achieved by the operators is largely dependent upon the games , tables and technology provided by AGEM members . He recounts the high points of his leadership and why he believes AGEM will continue to grow under the incoming executive director , Daron Dorsey . He spoke with GGB Publisher Roger Gros at the GGB offices in Boulder City , Nevada in January . To hear a full podcast of this interview , visit GGBMagazine . com .
GGB : Congratulations for completing 14 years at the helm of AGEM . Prior to your arrival , AGEM was kind of directionless . What did you do to get them on the right path , with the guidance of the board of directors , of course ? Marcus Prater : If you go back to the beginning of my time , which was March 2008 , I thought during my years at Bally that AGEM had much potential to do a lot of great things . The executive director at the time was a nice enough fellow , but I had a vision of what AGEM could be , and it started with the growth in the membership .
IGT was dominating at the time , but its chairman Chuck Mathewson brought together all the domestic U . S . slot companies as founding members — IGT , Bally , WMS and Aristocrat . We had at the time only 32 members and none from outside the U . S . Even then the gaming industry was global , and it ’ s even more so now . All of these manufacturers were showing up at trade shows in Macau and London and Buenos Aires and Las Vegas . So to ignore the global aspect of the industry was not the right thing to do .
And so I went out and started using the contacts I had from my Bally days to convince different companies to join . Novomatic obviously with its dominance in Europe at the time was the most significant . Jens Halle , who headed up Novomatic at the time , was skeptical . Everyone thought that “ A ” in AGEM stood for American , which was not true then or now . But getting Novomatic to join as a Gold member , at the same level appropriately as IGT , Bally and the others , the membership growth really took off from there . At our peak , we had 190 members in March 2021 , from 22 different countries .
The reality is our influence has grown , and our ability to have a seat at the table in every regulated jurisdiction in the world has improved dramatically .
So when you grow like that , it brings a perspective from all over the world . Right now we have 171 members . We lost a few during the pandemic .
With the rise of iGaming , sports betting and fintech , are you getting a boost in your membership from those segments ? Yes , it ’ s blurring obviously where the IGTs and Sci Games are happily making their slot machines , but they ’ re also providing the sports betting engines that these operators are using . And then you start to throw in the fintech side of cashless and payment processing and it ’ s an exciting time .
AGEM also partners with other organizations — for example , the AGA where you ’ re focusing on the illegal slot games , sometimes called skill games . How ’ s that effort going ? We ’ ve made more progress , frankly , in the last few months than we have in the last year . We announced a campaign some two years ago . The AGEM board was frustrated at the spread of these so-called skill games in Pennsylvania , Missouri and Virginia in particular . I knew then and I know now that
36 Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022