I was in Las Vegas recently for PMA 2009 which is one of the world’s largest exhibitions for consumer electronics and as you can imagine there was a huge amount of drone and chatter going on in this cavernous series of exhibition halls.

Not only does Nevada host PMA but Las Vegas is certainly one of those towns which has a lot of pizzaz and va-va-voom with the strip and casinos and a definite 24 hour, round-the-clock lifestyle.

I saw several trade show displays with slot machines on them and this was a surprise to me – attendees were falling over themselves playing them and I just could not understand what was going on – I mean, here we are in Gambling Central for the world with slots all over the place, and yet, in this arena, surrounded by state of the art techno gizmo’s here are these guys playing slots like they were about to be phased out forever?

I grabbed one of the guys I’d seen and recognized from a show a couple of years ago and asked him what was going on – the company behind the booth with the slots was allowing attendees to win vouchers which could be cashed in for casino gambling chips which I thought was pretty neat given we were in Vegas.

I got hold of one of the exhibitors, Mike Hollenbrook and we talked about business, PMA 2009 and what was going on – they had used slot machines before and always they provided a great attraction mechanism with flashing lights and sounds of money being paid out.  With the exhibition taking place in Vegas they had gone a step further after a successful tie -in with a casino on the strip.  Casinos want people pulled into their gambling and gaming arena while the company was meeting a bunch of highly-paid convention visitors who would be bound to unwind somewhere in Vegas in the evenings so what better way than get the casino to sponsor the slots and prizes for the convention attendees in exchange for which the casino was given a head start on the convention attendees attention.

I like this kind of deal best of all – someone else pays for it and you get something to bring in the attendees to your booth – everyone wins unless you have a really bad evening on the tables for real!