“Our latest innovations are focused on sportsbetting; we are integrating cash payments to online and land-based sportsbetting business, at the same machines that redeem casino tickets. And this combined feature is quite innovative and we are presenting it to the US market for the first time now,” said Kai Buenger.

When asked about the feedback received from visitors, he commented: “There’s a lot of interest in such solutions because it seems like all the providers didn’t add cash payments to their payment options for their online platforms, and we all know cash will always be a factor in gambling and leaving cash payments away means to miss a central part of the cake, and our devices compel to solve this problem.”

Then, he gave his view on this first edition of ICE North America. “Actually, on one hand, ICE North America is a big opportunity for companies to present themselves, especially to customers which you don’t meet at traditional G2E show. We are meeting new potential customers here and that’s what the show is good for. On the other hand, I am a bit disappointed because I was hoping the show to be a bit bigger. I was expecting to see more exhibitors. But nevertheless, we`ll give it a chance and come back for next year’s edition.”

He then gave his reasons to come to this new event: “To run shows like his is quite expensive and takes a lot of effort. Besides, if we don’t come to US, people will not know about VNE, so we have to come here to make our product visible for US customers.”

When consulted about his expectations and goals for this year, Buenger said: “Actually, it’s in our focus to expand our US business. VNE has been licensed and approved for Nevada and now we are looking for additional opportunities in other US states and it’s our expectation to meet people who are interested in our product and maybe can help us to expand here and in Canada.“

Besides, he was asked about the profile of the North American player: “The typical North American player is someone playing slot machines. They have a traditional sportsbetting on horse races and dog races, which is operated in almost half of the US states, but now sporstbetting is getting licenses in more and more US states. So we bring here our regular redemption machines with all the functionalities, and customers need also to handle automated cash transactions on their sportsbooks, online as well as landbased.”

“The North American market is huge and it’s even growing, and sportsbetting makes it even bigger and more important. There is no way any company which is thinking global is not planning to have presence in the US market. This market is and will always be the dominating market for gambling, no matter if it’s online or landbased, the number of players and volumes is mandatory for any global gambling company in this business,” he pointed.

Finally, he affirmed: “Our company is doing up to 45 shows per year. I will attend Juegos Miami show but with our view and range of products we are also developing and producing automated cash handling devices for totally different businesses, so we will always have shows.”