Sixty-six floors up, before the trade show doors open
On the Sunday evening before G2E 2026 opened, roughly 200 people were standing on the 66th floor of Resorts World Las Vegas with a glass of something cold in one hand, the Strip laid out behind them, and two hours to talk before the week swallowed everyone whole. That was the Day Zero Party, hosted by CDC Gaming in partnership with Global Gaming Women at Allē Lounge on 66. It ran 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Hors d’oeuvres, beer, champagne, wine, a handful of short speeches, and a presentation ceremony.
It sounds like a drinks reception because it is one. But follow the evening from invitation to closing remarks and you get a fairly clear read on how the casino industry actually builds relationships and careers, which is rarely on the conference agenda and almost never in the press releases.
The event, in plain numbers
Here’s the whole thing at a glance before we unpack it.
| Detail | Specifics |
|---|---|
| Event | Day Zero Party, ahead of G2E 2026 |
| Hosts | CDC Gaming, in partnership with Global Gaming Women (GGW) |
| Venue | Allē Lounge on 66, Resorts World Las Vegas |
| Timing | Sunday evening before G2E week, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. |
| Attendance | Almost 200 guests |
| Centrepiece | Presentation ceremony for the 10 Women Rising in Gaming honorees |
| Milestone | Fifth class of the programme, taking the total to 50 women recognised |
Fifty women, five classes, one visible pipeline
The 2026 cohort is the fifth class of 10 Women Rising in Gaming, which brings the running total to 50 honorees since the programme started. That number is the part worth sitting with. Fifty is small enough to be a shortlist and large enough to be a network, and it compounds every year in a way a single award never does.
You could see the compounding on the night. The emcee was Nicole Russo, Operations Director at the UNLV International Center for Gaming Regulation and herself a 2024 honoree. A woman recognised two years earlier was on the microphone introducing the next ten. That is what a pipeline looks like when it is working: recognition, then visibility, then a role at the front of the room.
Short speeches came from CDC Gaming group CEO Andrew W Scott, Resorts World Las Vegas SVP of Operations Josef Wagner, and GGW First Vice President Brandi Ellis. CDC Gaming Publisher Cory Roberts framed the reasoning simply, saying there was no better way to start G2E week than bringing friends and colleagues from across the industry together, and that this year was particularly special with the fifth class taking the total to 50 women recognised through the programme. He added that the Day Zero Party “continues to grow into exactly what we hoped it could be, a relaxed way to bring people together before G2E while putting a spotlight on people who are making a real impact on the industry.”
Details on the programme itself sit at CDC Gaming’s 10 Women Rising hub.
How a press party turned into Day Zero
The event did not appear fully formed. It grew out of CDC Gaming’s long-running Press Party, held on the Sunday before G2E for years, and that origin explains its shape. A press party is small, informal, and built around journalists and the people who want to talk to them. Renaming it Day Zero and attaching an awards ceremony widened the room without changing what makes it useful: no booth, no badge scanner, no fifteen-minute meeting slot.
There is a practical lesson in that for anyone building an industry event. The value was not the venue view, however good it is from 66 floors up. It was the timing. Sunday evening is the one window during G2E week when nobody is mid-demo, nobody is chasing a keynote, and nobody has a conflicting appointment three halls away. Get people in a room then and they will actually finish a conversation.
What the sponsor list quietly tells you
CDC Gaming credited Resorts World Las Vegas as venue sponsor, with Passport Technology, Renova Technology, Light & Wonder and CCT as gold sponsors and Mindway AI as silver sponsor.
Read that list as a snapshot of who considers this audience worth reaching. A major operator’s flagship Strip property, a tier-one game supplier, payments and hardware specialists, and an AI firm associated with player protection. Diversity and networking initiatives get treated as soft topics in budget meetings. Here, the money came from the same suppliers who spend heavily on the trade show floor a day later, which suggests the room was valued on the same terms as a booth.
Why this matters if you work in iGaming, not land-based
G2E reads as a slot floor show from the outside. In practice the online side of the business does a large share of its deal-making, hiring and regulatory catching-up in the same week, in the same city, largely through conversations like these. If your job touches sportsbook, casino content, payments, affiliate deals or compliance, three things follow from an evening like Day Zero.
- The week starts before the week starts. Arriving Monday morning means missing the least crowded, highest quality networking of the entire show. Fly in Saturday or Sunday if you can.
- Trade press hosts are worth cultivating. Day Zero exists because a publisher runs it. Editorial teams sit at the centre of these networks, which is why a press-party origin story produced a 200-person event rather than a media scrum.
- Recognition programmes are recruitment pools. Fifty women recognised across five classes, drawn from operators, suppliers, regulators and academia, is a searchable list of people who have already been vetted by their peers. Hiring managers and panel organisers should be using it.
The broader point is about calendar discipline. The gaming industry’s year has a small number of fixed moments where the whole ecosystem is physically in one place, and G2E week is the biggest of them in North America. The organisations that get value out of it decide in advance what they want from each evening, not just each conference day.
The unglamorous conclusion
Nothing about the Day Zero Party was complicated. Two hours, one lounge, 200 people, ten honorees, a milestone worth marking. Its usefulness came from being early, being relaxed, and pointing attention at specific individuals rather than at a brand.
That is a repeatable formula, and a cheap one relative to a trade show budget. The fifth class of honorees and the fiftieth name on the list are the reason it will still be running next September, long after most of us have forgotten which supplier had the biggest stand at G2E 2026.
If gambling stops being entertainment for you, deposit and session limits, cool-off periods and self-exclusion tools are available at licensed operators, and confidential support services exist in most regulated markets.
About the Author
