International Game Technology is fifty years old this year. For its age, it’s been an awfully revolutionary company.
Let’s start with the founder, William “Si” Redd. He was Mississippi-born and bred. When he was in college, he invested in a pinball machine, then became a distributor for Wurlitzer jukeboxes. From an early age, he understood that machines could be very entertaining. Then he went to work for Bally Manufacturing, so he was back to pinball. But Bally also made slot machines. That brought Redd to Reno in 1967. He founded a subsidiary to distribute jukeboxes. Along the way, he made another important move: he acquired the rights to produce video poker machines.
It may be worth remembering that 1967 was a big year for changing the gaming industry. Howard Hughes started buying hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. The state legislature passed the original corporate gaming law, which it amended in 1969. That law, with some tinkering, still pretty much governs the industry in Nevada. The inaugurations of Governors Ronald Reagan of California and Paul Laxalt of Nevada, and their relationship, would have a profound effect on the nation and the world. And Si Redd was part of all that change.
In 1975, Redd left Bally and started his own company. First he called it A-1 Supply, Then he changed the name to Sircoma, which stood for Si Redd’s Coin Machines. By 1981, it had become International Game Technology.
IGT was part of a revolution on the casino floor. Historically, the pit brought in the big money and slots were more of a side attraction. That changed with the computer chip and the possibilities it opened up. Burton Cohen was a longtime and legendary hotel-casino operator. He said he was going to stick with the games featuring people instead of machines, but he realized that the machines never called in sick or stole from the house or unionized. And this was happening as Las Vegas was about to begin a boom, and gambling was spreading across the country. Video poker would be a key component of it.
But there was more to IGT than video poker. The company acquired other businesses that helped build its own success. IGT brought us the Megabucks machine. It also licensed the game show Wheel of Fortune for a slot machine. It has gone on to create slot machines based on other game shows as well as Star Wars, Sex and the City, and The Amazing Race. It started the Game King video machine. It came up with the M-P series, meaning multi-player machines for games like roulette and baccarat. In 2014, G-tech acquired the company for $6.4 billion, and it kept expanding its involvement in everything from lotteries and
Indian gaming to sports betting. It set up an online division, with all kinds of internet games. It kept winning awards for its new creations and making profits from their success. And almost a year ago, G-Tech made a deal with Everi Holdings for IGT’s slot machine and digital gaming business to separate from the lottery business into a separate public company. Under the terms, the new company would be called … IGT. Then Apollo Global, the private equity firm, bought Everi and IGT. Billions of dollars later, IGT had changed gaming, and one of the reasons was because an old Mississippi pinball and jukebox salesman had an idea.