IGT’s 1,100 Jobs in RI Average $100,000 a Year - IGT Chair Vincent on Economic Impact to State
IGT’s 1,100 Jobs in RI Average $100,000 a Year - IGT Chair Vincent on Economic Impact to State
“As you know, IGT is formerly GTECH, which started above Capriccio’s restaurant with a small group of people and grew over the years and really, it is Rhode Island’s most successful high-tech startup. We now have about $5 billion in revenues annually from operations in over a hundred countries around the world,” said Vincent. “So Rhode Island has been one of our homes — certainly one that has been very close to our lottery business which started here — and remains here.”
Vincent, a Rhode Island native and URI graduate, talked about his own journey from GTECH to now Chair of IGT, and why he believes the contract extension benefits Rhode Island.
“With four years left on our contract, we approached the state and said we’d like to understand what our relationship is going to look like in the future. We have been committed to, and obligated and abided by a commitment that we made when the economic development deal was first struck with Governor Carcieri to a thousand employees,” said Vincent. “Keep in mind that the gaming program is the third-largest source of revenue for the state, both in their gaming machines that operate out at Twin River as well as their lottery program.”
“We provide major systems for that, and those systems to be converted — if you were to go to a RFP, it would take at least two years a piece. You can’t do them simultaneously -- they have to be done sequentially, otherwise you’re going to put at great risk that revenue stream because the systems have some dependencies. It’s a major undertaking,” said Vincent of putting the contract out to bid.
Economic Impact
“I call [this] an economic development agreement, because the state is interested in preserving and obligating IGT to preserving those thousand jobs for another twenty years,” said Vincent. “We’re willing to make the investment, and all we’ve asked of the state is, let’s put together an arrangement that we continue our contracts, we invest in them to the tune of about $150 million dollars -- we pay them $25 million upfront — but we do that with the certainty of a 20 year contract, and the state gets a guarantee of twenty years of high paying jobs. The average salary for an IGT worker in Rhode Island is over $100,00 a year and we have a payroll of over $100 million a year — so you can imagine the impact that has on the local economy.”
“We said to them, listen, we understand it has to be a fair deal for the state and fair for IGT, and I think that’s what we’re doing. I think we’ve crafted an agreement that preserves the priorities of the state going into it, making sure that the stream of revenues they get is uninterrupted and not put at risk, and at the same time the thousand families we have as part of IGT remain here,” said Vincent.
The segment is sponsored content from IGT.