Nevada is synonymous with gaming. Not only is it home to the internationally-renowned gambling destinations of Las Vegas and Reno, but also many of the industry’s pioneering gaming equipment developers and manufacturers.
Such is its place within the industry that to be licensed there is to have arrived on the world’s stage. Much of this owes to the fact that it is perhaps the most tightly regulated jurisdiction in the world and has arguably done more than any other to rid the industry of its perceived links to criminality.
The process is ongoing, however, and the man charged with the task of ensuring that Nevada’s gaming market remains fair, legal and fully regulated is State Gaming Control Board chairman Mark Lipparelli. He was appointed to the Board in 2009 and was named chairman by Governor Brian Sandoval in January last year but, unlike many of his predecessors, Lipparelli has a background in industry thanks to years spent with several companies from both the gaming and technology spaces.
“As I was finishing graduate school, my thesis advisor, Dr Bill Eadington, the foremost academic on gaming in the world, encouraged me to consider the gaming industry while I had my sights set on an investment bank,” he recalls. “I took an interview with Circus Circus Enterprises in Las Vegas and had a chance meeting with a friend who introduced me to Steve Weiss who had just founded Casino Data Systems. I was intrigued by Steve’s vision and his enthusiasm for the industry.”
The next five years with CDS, he says, were incredibly rewarding both personally and professionally.
This feature can be read in full in the May 2012 issue of InterGaming
