Knights in deal with slot maker

First such pact for sports team

A small but rapidly growing Las Vegas-based gaming equipment manufacturer is partnering with one of the hottest tickets in town — the Vegas Golden Knights.

AGS, the nation’s second-largest manufacturer of Class II slot machines used primarily in tribal jurisdictions, announced a threeyear marketing partnership Monday with the Knights. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

It’s the first partnership between a gaming equipment manufacturer and a major-league sports team.

While the partnership will officially launch at the Global Gaming Expo trade show Oct. 9-11 in Las Vegas, pieces of it were revealed at a preseason Knights game at T-mobile Arena, where AGS has its brand tagline “Obsessed with the Game” on a scoreboard. The AGS “Play of the Game” will show a defining highlight of all preseason and regular-season home games, as well as playoff games, on the massive video screen above the T-mobile center ice.

At G2E, the Knights will have the Golden Aces ambassador team and mascot Chance at the AGS booth, which will feature a Knights promotional-use slot machine in one of the company’s Big Red large-format cabinets.

Representatives of the Knights and AGS say the partnership makes sense because the organizations have similar histories.

The Knights weren’t given much of a chance for success in its inaugural year, yet won the Pacific Division and Western Conference championships en route to the Stanley Cup Final, where

KNIGHTS

they lost to the Washington Capitals.

AGS also wasn’t give much of a chance when the company went public in January. But since its initial public offering, the stock price has climbed 80 percent, closing Friday at $29.82 a share, and the company has a 5 percent share of all shipped products. Since 2014, AGS has seen its revenue grow 250 percent and the number of games sold increase by 1,247 percent.

“We were attracted to AGS because of the similarities we’ve had, both on the ice and in the gaming sphere,” said Jim Frevola, senior vice president and chief sales officer for the Knights. “We both kind of came out of nowhere and haven’t been around for very long, which was a neat quirk we liked between the two groups.”

“We hadn’t done a partnership with a sports organization before,” said Julia Boguslawski, AGS’S chief marketing officer. “We reached out to the Knights right before the playoffs last season on the possibility of partnering with them. There’s something so special about this team and the parallels to the AGS story.”

In addition to in-arena promotions, AGS has developed a Knights animation for its roulette signage and will sponsor the team’s Dec. 20 game against the New York Islanders. The Knights have pledged to support AGS’S philanthropic efforts for E.W. Griffith Elementary School with a pep rally and an appearance by Chance and the team’s drum line.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702477-3893. Follow @Rickvelotta on Twitter.