AI, iGaming and Regulation Need the Same Leadership Skills, Says UNR Expert

AI, iGaming and regulatory change look like three separate challenges on paper, but they demand the same core leadership trait underneath. With AI, executives need enough working knowledge to make informed decisions without necessarily becoming technologists themselves.

With iGaming, leadership has to shift toward managing continuous digital relationships with customers rather than relying mainly on interactions tied to a physical property. With regulation, the rules increasingly dictate product design, technology choices, marketing strategy, data handling and decisions about which markets to enter in the first place. The common thread running through all three is that leaders must be willing to learn well outside their existing areas of expertise.

“That is precisely what EDP pushes participants to do,” McClenahan adds. 

“Someone who spent a career in casino operations may suddenly need to understand data infrastructure. A digital-first executive may need a crash course in regulatory strategy. A finance leader may need to get comfortable with responsible gambling policy or customer experience design. A true leader must adapt and always be willing to learn new things.”

The EDP traces back to 1990 and to one person in particular, Dr. Bill Eadington. Over 44 years at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), Eadington became one of the earliest and most influential scholars to treat commercial gaming as a subject worthy of serious academic study. He founded UNR's Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming and, years earlier in 1974, established the International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, with the last event of the series held in Las Vegas this past May.

EDP grew out of that same push to bring academic discipline to an industry that had mostly operated on instinct and experience. The problem Eadington identified decades ago still sounds familiar today. Casino managers could pick up operational knowledge on the job well enough, but there was little available to help senior executives think about strategy, organizational leadership or ideas borrowed from other industries.

Historical accounts of the program's founding describe exactly that gap between hands-on casino experience and the kind of broader executive education available in most other sectors. EDP was built to close it.

“As a director of outreach and engagement at the UNR Business School, I develop executive leadership programs for many business sectors, including the mining and manufacturing industries. Even my academic courses pull material from EDP,” McClenahan said. 

“On a recent Nevada Global Business trip to Sydney, Australia, Anthony Sobb, CEO of Fairfield RSL, an EDP alum and current team coach, gave us a phenomenal visit to his property and a great overview of the regulatory climate. Unknown to any of the students, he planned an EDP exercise for them in front of all his senior leaders. These are the real-life experiences that help leaders learn and grow.”

What started as a UNR initiative eventually grew into something larger. The program now runs as a joint effort between UNR's College of Business and Extended Studies and UNLV's International Gaming Institute, pulling together academics, sitting gaming executives, regulators and industry leaders from markets across the globe.

EDP is entering its 36th year this year, with a network of more than 1,800 graduates representing 53 or more countries. That growth reflects two Nevada institutions with different but complementary strengths. UNR carries the deeper academic history in gaming economics and research, dating back to Eadington's original work.

UNLV offers proximity to the world's most closely watched gaming market and a front-row seat to how the modern industry operates day to day. Combining those two perspectives gives EDP a mix of theory and practical relevance that neither school could offer entirely on its own, which helps explain why the program has kept expanding rather than fading as the industry around it has changed.

It would be easy to assume a program like this is just a week of panel discussions, but that undersells what actually happens. Participants spend an intensive week immersed in the material, hearing directly from senior industry figures and academics rather than sitting through a lineup of keynote speeches. They work in assigned teams throughout the week, undergo formal leadership assessments and are handed a realistic strategic problem to solve together.

The strategic problem is typically a real world challenge. In prior years, it was an RFP to design and present an integrated resort on one of several sites near New York City. Many years ago, it was a similar case study with Japan, which the Japanese government actually requested to view. The 2026 case follows current events, though it can't be revealed until the program starts.

By the end of the week, those teams present their solutions and have to defend their reasoning in front of peers and faculty. The 2026 case competition frames the challenge around a simple but demanding question, essentially asking participants to figure out how they would win the future of gaming. That format matters because it forces executives to do more than absorb information.

They have to apply it under time pressure, alongside people from different companies and different corners of the world, which is a far more accurate simulation of real leadership than a conference agenda could ever provide.

Two figures give the 2026 program its intellectual backbone, and both bring credentials that match the material. McClenahan leads the session on learning about your leadership skills, walking participants through the results of a personalized assessment and showing them how to apply those findings to the rest of the week and to their careers going forward.

Dr. Bernhard leads a different kind of session entirely, a TED-style talk on the science behind the gaming and hospitality industry and what he calls the fun economy. Bernhard was previously invited to deliver an actual TED Talk on the strengths of the industry and the people who run it, and he uses that same framing here to set the tone for the week, explaining the science behind motivation and mission before the group moves into more tactical material.

The clearest evidence that EDP has kept pace with the industry is the lineup of speakers and topics on this year's schedule. Earle G. Hall addresses what executives actually need to know about AI. Todd Haushalter looks at where gaming products such as online slots, poker, and roulette are headed in a session built around the concept of a game of games. Andrew Burke covers technology broadly and what comes next for operators.

Robert Rippee explains how a physical property can function as an innovation lab rather than just a place of business. Alan Feldman focuses on crisis communication, a skill that has only become more valuable in recent years. Anthony Lucas tackles common myths in gaming leadership and daily operations.

“None of this means EDP has quietly turned into a technology bootcamp,” McClenahan adds. 

“It means technology now plays a role in nearly every decision a gaming executive makes. A chief executive does not need to know how to write code, but increasingly needs a working understanding of what that code can do to the business, the customer relationship and the bottom line.”

McClenahan's comparison to the pandemic is not just a convenient analogy. COVID showed, in real time, that even carefully built plans can become obsolete almost overnight. Leaders had to make consequential decisions with incomplete information, often within days or hours. Communication mattered as much as operational execution, and the trust of both employees and customers proved just as important as any balance sheet.

Executives had to move fast without moving recklessly, a balance that is much easier to describe than to actually pull off. EDP had already been tested on this front. During 2020, the program shifted its own curriculum heavily toward crisis management and crisis leadership in direct response to the pandemic. The broader lesson that emerged from that period still guides the program today.

Nobody can build a playbook for every possible crisis in advance. What leadership development can do is build leaders capable of writing that playbook themselves, under pressure, when the moment actually arrives.

The team case study that runs through much of the week is where all of this comes together in practice. Participants work through a surprise challenge or case study as a group and eventually present formal solutions that are judged at the close of the program.

The point of the exercise is not really whether the team lands on the technically correct answer to a fictional business problem. The real value is in what the process forces people to practice: listening to teammates with different backgrounds, compromising on a shared approach and challenging assumptions that go unquestioned in their own organizations.

At the same time, the process enables participants to work alongside leadership styles they are not used to, communicate clearly while under time pressure, defend a strategic position in front of skeptical peers and change course when new information contradicts the original plan. Those are the exact behaviors executives need when a real playbook stops working and there is no time to draft a new one from scratch.

This is the tension at the center of the entire conversation. Gaming companies are under pressure to respond quickly to AI, new product categories, digital competitors and shifting customer expectations. At the same time, that speed has to be weighed against regulation, responsible gambling commitments, customer trust, the impact on employees, data privacy and long-term reputation.

Moving too slowly risks falling behind competitors who are already adapting. Moving too fast without accounting for those other factors risks the kind of mistake that is far harder to undo than a missed product launch. This is where EDP's real value shows up. Leadership development gives executives a lower-stakes environment to work through exactly these trade-offs, stress-testing their thinking before the decisions in front of them carry real financial, regulatory or reputational consequences.

EDP began because Eadington recognized that a casino industry growing more sophisticated by the year needed a more serious form of executive development than what existed at the time. 36 years later, that same basic premise still holds up. The technologies involved are unrecognizable compared with those of 1990. The markets are bigger and more global. The regulatory landscape is far more layered.

The customer on the other end of the transaction can now be entirely digital and located anywhere in the world. What has not changed is the underlying need McClenahan keeps coming back to: an industry that is being asked, once again, to write a new playbook, and a program built specifically to prepare the people who will have to write it.

“My friend and colleague, Dr. Bo Bernhard, has written about the global growth of the middle class and a desire for experiences. He calls it ‘The Fun Economy.’ The Fun Economy is driving growth in tourism, sports and integrated resorts worldwide. We are honored to be part of its future,” McClenahan said.