What surprised no one, however, was the announcement of the top EKG award, with Aristocrat Gaming winning its seventh consecutive nod as Best Overall Suppler of Slot Content. No other company has yet won the top supplier award.
“The EKG Awards recognise top performance, and we are grateful to each of our customers who allow us the privilege of entertaining players with our leading game content, hardware, systems, and more,” said Aristocrat Gaming CEO Craig Toner in a press release the day after the awards ceremony.
“Both in land-based and online sectors, we are committed to creating the best seat in the house for players, and these awards are a testament to our talented teams across the globe who are delivering on this commitment.”
Increasing competition
While Aristocrat once again landed the top award, it yielded its prior dominance of the individual categories to some of its closest rivals.
In 2022, Aristocrat won nine individual awards. In 2023, the company claimed six — both years more nods than any other supplier. Last year was the first year another supplier claimed more individual awards than Aristocrat. In 2024, Light & Wonder scored seven to Aristocrat’s five.
This year, Aristocrat received only one individual award in addition to the Best Overall nod. Its new King Max cabinet won recognition as Top Performing New Premium Cabinet. IGT and Light & Wonder dominated the individual categories. IGT logged the most individual awards with seven, with L&W right behind at six.
IGT’s awards included Top Performing New Premium Game for Tiger & Dragon Cash On Reels, Top Performing Third Party IP Branded Game for Whitney Houston, Top Performing Video Poker/Keno Game for Mega Hot Poker, Top Performing Game-EMEA for Magic Treasures Dragon, Most Innovative Land-Based Game for Tiger & Dragon Cash On Reels, Top Performing New Online Table Game for Blackjack Poker & Pairs Surrender, and Best Overall Supplier of Online Content.
Light & Wonder’s Huff N Even More Puff was named Top Performing New Core Video Game, and Double Blazing 777 2X3X5X received recognition as the Top Performing New Core Mechanical Reel Game. Its 88 Fortunes game was named Social Slots Game of the Year, and its StacKing Kong got the nod as Most Innovative Online Game. L&W also was named Most Improved Supplier-Premium, and its SciPlay subsidiary was named Social Casino Operator of the Year.
The rest of the awards program offered some expected results, plus a few newcomers to the awards.
Repeats and newcomers
Zitro repeated its crown for Top Performing Game-Latin America with Mighty Hammer Link Up. Interblock was once again named Top Performing Electronic Table Game Supplier. Sega Sammy won its first two EKG Slot Awards. Its Genesis Atmos named Top Performing New Core Cabinet and its Railroad Riches-Sheriff game getting the nod as Top Performing Game from an Emerging Supplier.
Another newcomer, Incredible Technologies, won the award as Most Improved Supplier-Core.
AGS and Ainsworth both landed awards on the igaming side. AGS won for Top Performing New Online Slot Game in 3X Ultra Diamond. Ainsworth won for Top Performing Omnichannel Slot Game in San Fa Pandas. White Hat Studios was recognised as the Most Improved Supplier of Online Content.
EKG Awards hall of fame
Finally, two new members were inducted into the EKG Slot Awards Hall of Fame. In the Game Development category, the inductee was Dominic Tiberio, who joined Bally Manufacturing in Chicago in 1963. He developed the groundbreaking Money Honey game, the first electro-mechanical slot machine. Tiberio then produced winners for all incarnations of Bally, from Game Maker to Black Gold and more. He retired in 2008.
On the Slot Operations side, the Hall of Fame inductee was Robert Allen. His distinguished career started with his first job as slot floor supervisor in 1984 at Harrah’s Marina Casino. He then spent 14 years heading slots at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, before retiring as a slot operations executive in Louisiana in 2017.
“On behalf of everyone at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, I would like to congratulate all of the individual award winners, as well as this year’s Hall of Fame Class,” said Todd Eilers, principal at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming LLC. “I would also like to thank our Board of Advisors, official voters, VIPs, and our event sponsors. It was an amazing night celebrating the industry’s top games and people.”
Voting for the land-based category winners for the EKG Slot Awards came from more than 120 qualified slot directors. They represent more than 320 casinos across US and Canadian, and representing roughly 330,000 total slot machines. For the igaming and social casino segments, winners were determined by voting from a distinguished panel of industry experts.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/casino-games/slots/aristocrat-igt-lw-dominate-slot-awards/
