00:00When I have talked to people about your company or reference you guys, they're like, who's that?
00:04And I'm like, oh, it's the people. They're all over LinkedIn. Like it's not their content, but
00:08their little logo is all over LinkedIn because everyone's very proud. The suppliers, they love
00:14to have their games and their cabinets and all of that called out on your charts. And then the
00:18operators also like to see that too. Yeah. So EKG short for Eilers and Krejcik. So if you've ever
00:24seen that on LinkedIn and try to figure out how that was pronounced, that's how you pronounce
00:27it pretty, pretty tough. I love that they put them back to back too. They're like, we're
00:31also going to, yeah, we're going to layer that. And yeah, in short, we're a market research
00:36firm focused on gaming. So I'm the director of the Game Performance Database. It's the
00:41world's largest repository of game performance. We track 650,000 machines globally. It started
00:49off in 2018. Todd Eilers and Rick Eckert, the managing director, were looking for a way to
00:55sort of formalize surveying vendor performance and had some operator buy-in. Started off with
01:02probably 30,000, 40,000 machines in 2018, very U.S. focused. And since then, we've really
01:08expanded the scope across the U.S., across different markets, Class II, Canada. And then
01:16now we've expanded our game performance database into Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America.
01:21Our goal's always been to sort of standardize game performance and sort of serve as sort
01:27of an objective third party as to what games are performing, what are players drawn to,
01:32what kind of mechanics are resonating with players. So yeah, as you said, you probably
01:37see a lot of our research fly out there. And we work really closely with operators and vendors
01:41alike in collecting that game performance. We standardize it each month. Each month we put
01:48out what I would say is our bread and butter report, our game performance report. And
01:52it's basically a report that just sort of stacks up all the different games we're seeing right
01:56now, both new and overall. And we're scoring them and trying to understand what's resonating
02:03with players and just sort of moving the industry forward.
02:05And this, for operators, is probably like a godsend. When you first started pitching this
02:11to operators, were they like, yes, please, we would actually love that?
02:14Well, now there's like hundreds of games coming out each year, right? And you don't
02:19have a budget or a floor space for a hundred games. And how do you sort of sift through which
02:25game should I purchase? Because you're also dealing with vendors who are telling you anecdotes
02:30about performance. So I think we're coming in there, we're arming operators with a little
02:33bit more data to go, you know, I want X amount of these, or I don't want that or more
02:38of that.
02:38But I see that's working and I don't have it. Why don't I have that? So I think we're helping
02:43bring some more tools to optimizing your floor, sort of use it as a shopper, like a buyer's
02:50catalog too. Like, hey, I saw that at G2E or I saw that at Aiga. How's it performing
02:55now? Do I want to invest in that? So yeah, I think it's a pretty nice tool to have.
02:58What's also great about it is it's complimentary for operators. So how the value exchange works
03:03is operators send us a snapshot of monthly performance. We don't ask for anything too
03:09intrusive. We're looking for a list of games and some, some performance ratios, nothing really
03:14sensitive such as wins or actuals or things like that. So in an exchange, you get not just the game
03:20report, but reports on cabinets, performance, ETGs, mechanics, general market trends, just, just a lot
03:29of different things that I think if you're, if you're operating, just things you should be privy
03:33to. And so it's a pretty good value of exchange and a good suite of tools for, to have for
03:40the operators.
03:41What's like the most common question you get asked from suppliers and from operators?
03:46I think they're just really interested in knowing how, how can I use this report to, for vendors,
03:54how can I use this report to help improve my product roadmap, make better games, make games
04:00that players want to play. And for operators, they're not as, you know, they're not necessarily,
04:06they don't need to know the nuts and bolts and the ins and outs of the games, but what can
04:09I,
04:09I need to deliver a product that my players want to have. And it's, it's kind of like a buyer's
04:13catalog for, okay, I need to go get this. So I think definitely working with both of them on how
04:19they can use the reports to sort of improve their strategy, um, helping vendors understand what
04:25products are working or what kind of mechanics or trends are working and, uh, delivering it in that
04:29in a way that's digestible. And same with operators too, how, how can we deliver a product that,
04:34you know, you're, the operators are dealing with a million things a day and a million different
04:39reports. So how can we deliver something in a way that's super digestible and, Hey, go get this,
04:44or, Hey, this is doing really well. Um, and you don't have it. So, um, I, I think that's what
04:50we've been trying to do. And we're just trying to deliver that efficiently and effectively.
04:54Do you ever get, uh, negative feedback about?
04:59Yeah, sometimes games, sometimes games don't, don't do as well as I think they might have,
05:05but I would say, um, on net, I think the feedback is mainly positive. I mean,
05:10you spend so, I mean, vendors spend so much time on a game. They spend upwards of,
05:15you know, spend one to two years on a game. And I, I, I'm sure it's, um, I'm sure it's
05:20a really
05:21nice feeling to see a game come in on, you know, these top 25s. And then on the other hand,
05:25it
05:25probably is a little bit of a bummer if you spend, you know, all this time on a game and
05:30it doesn't
05:31hit the list. And that is the nature of the business, unfortunately too, is there's just so many
05:36games that come out and, um, but the, you know, the cream rises to the top though. So
