Meet Your Dedicated Global Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports Leadership Team
Our team of highly experienced Executive Counselors combines deep IT leadership experience in the global Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports sectors with exhaustive knowledge of Info-Tech’s products and services. They help you get the most out of your membership by creating a flexible plan for using our research and advisory services to deliver your key initiatives and solve the problems you are facing.
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Larry Fretz is the global Senior Managing Partner for Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports and is responsible for the operational and growth strategies for all of the firm’s Sports, Gaming & Hospitality business, industry-specific research agenda, and ensuring that we consistently align with and deliver on key initiatives, providing seamless service integration across Info-Tech and optimal delivery to members around the world. During his time at Info-Tech, in addition to writing gaming and hospitality research and thought leadership, Larry has advised, led, and delivered workshop and consulting engagements for gaming and global hospitality organizations throughout North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions. His expertise extends beyond IT leadership, strategy, and delivery, focusing on optimizing and transforming key business capabilities by assessing and driving technology modernization, crafting business cases centered around incremental revenue opportunities, and redesigning operating models. His approach integrates comprehensive IT and business assessments with a strategic vision for enhancing business operations and outcomes. Prior to joining Info-Tech, Larry had a successful track record as VP IT and CIO at Palms Casino Resort, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, and Niagara Casinos with extensive experience opening new luxury integrated resort properties, aligning technology with business needs, modernizing infrastructure, optimizing guest experience, and streamlining operations to drive significant EBITDA improvements. He currently resides in the Gaming & Hospitality capital of the world, in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. |
Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports Executive Services Team
David Farlin David Farlin is an Executive Counselor at Info-Tech Research Group. He is a former CIO and seasoned Gaming & Hospitality industry veteran joining our Global Services team. His unique background and work experience in various roles over 35 years in the industry, combined with his desire to constantly raise the bar and continually improve upon what’s been done before, make him well suited for mapping our client’s needs to the vast wealth of resources available and ensuring their value when delivered. He is the former CIO for Boyd Gaming Corporation and for the Borgata in Atlantic City, where he received recognition from the industry for their technical innovation and operational excellence. He has worked for a variety of well-known companies, including Caesars, Vail Resorts, Carnival, and Disney, and as a software vendor at Agilysys. His experience spans large-scale corporate hotels to upscale independent luxury hotels, the cruise industry, international tour and travel, destination ski resorts, internationally recognized theme parks, and both large and small casinos and resorts, including Native American gaming. Since having grown up on the high prairie in Nebraska, his work and travels have allowed him to live and work in Colorado, California, New Jersey, and Florida, as well as in the Bahamas and even for a brief time in British Columbia, Canada. He currently resides in the Gaming & Hospitality capital of the world, in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. |
Edison Barreto Edison Barreto is an Executive Counselor at Info-Tech Research Group and a technology leader with a 25-year career catalyzing growth across the Gaming, Hospitality, Retail, and Food & Beverage industries. His prowess lies in orchestrating digital and cultural transformations within organizations by fostering cross-functional leadership teams that marry IT modernization to core business goals. An advocate for cloud-first strategies, Edison excels in steering IT policy and oversight, emphasizing compliance and regulatory finesse in areas like PCI and GDPR. His strategic acumen shines in the complex arenas of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures, proving him to be a versatile navigator of the corporate IT landscape. In the executive realms of CIO and CTO, Edison's strategic insight has been vital in prioritizing business-aligned IT initiatives and spearheading centers of excellence (CoE) for digital innovation. His approach melds organizational design with change management, creating a resilient blueprint and architecture for strategic planning and execution that aligns with overarching business requirements and capabilities. Edison’s forward-thinking in risk management, security, and PMO prioritization complement his financial savvy in budgeting, focusing on total cost of ownership and return on investment. His track record illustrates his transformative leadership and persistence in achieving a harmonious balance between technological advancement and business success. |
Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports Industry Research Team
Elizabeth Silva |
Elizabeth Silva is passionate about delivering strategic initiatives through digital transformation and creating high-value experiences for the global sports, entertainment, gaming, and hospitality industries. She is a Senior Research Analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, where she conducts in-depth primary and secondary research, analyzes data, and develops insights for customers in various industry sectors. Elizabeth is driven by a passion for quality and creating a research product that helps leaders overcome the real problems they are facing, and she is always looking for input from IT leaders to drive better research. |
How We Help Our Members Succeed
The Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports team provides strategic, practical, and actionable research and advice that guides business and technology leaders in how to accelerate delivery of their key initiatives by leveraging Info-Tech’s core products:
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Custom Key Initiative Plans The Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports team builds and maintains a custom, evergreen plan for how to leverage our research and advisory services to accelerate delivery of your key initiatives. |
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Industry-specific research provides the tools needed to succeed across a highly volatile industry landscape.
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Research centers provide our members with one stop for all of the blueprints related to key IT practice areas and topics to help you go even deeper on initiatives that matter to you. |
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Comprehensive, Connected Blueprints Leverage unlimited independent and analyst-guided access to our detailed step-by-step guides and production-ready templates that accelerate delivery of your key initiatives. |
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Actionable Diagnostic-Driven Insights Our diagnostics team produces industry benchmark–backed assessments of your organization to help you to target the right initiatives and assess improvements over time. |
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Consulting-Quality Deliverables We do more than talk, we roll up our sleeves and create consulting-quality deliverables for all our advisory, executive, concierge, workshops, and consulting services. |
When you look beyond Info-Tech's mantra of better research, you’ll quickly see exactly what we mean. Every publication is a practical, research-backed guide supported by actionable advice on how to overcome the challenges technology leaders face today. In a time when the industries cannot afford to go slow, informed decision-making at speed is critical. The Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports team combines a deep knowledge of how you can leverage Info-Tech’s practical, actionable approach to research and advisory services with extensive experience as technology leaders within the industry. Our mission is to help you rapidly make data-driven decisions backed by robust research that empowers you to deliver exceptional services and organizational outcomes through technology.
Our Perspective on the Current State of Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports
The gaming and hospitality industries are at a dynamic intersection of technology, demand, and regulatory evolution. The hospitality sector is leveraging technology to overcome challenges associated with revenue growth, profitability, operational efficiency, and enhancing guest service, while the gaming industry is witnessing unprecedented growth, particularly in digital business models such as sports betting, online gaming, and digital service enablement such as cashless, loyalty, and marketing, all while combating ongoing cyber threats. This environment reflects an industry adapting to new realities with technology at its core, striving to balance operational efficiency with enhanced guest experiences and embracing the lucrative opportunities presented by the burgeoning gaming sector.
The sports industry is witnessing an era of unprecedented growth and transformation. As sports teams and leagues become more sophisticated and focused on content creation, the relationship between fans and sports is becoming more immersive and engaging. The industry’s expansion, through team sales, league expansions, new venues, and sponsorship models – in addition to the increasingly prominent convergence of hospitality, casino gaming, and sports betting with the sports entertainment business model and fan experience – is setting the stage for a vibrant future. This evolution is not just about the sports themselves but also about how sports are consumed, with media and content playing pivotal roles and representing a fundamental shift in how fans interact with sports. As the industry continues to grow and adapt, it's likely to offer even more opportunities for engagement, investment, and innovation.
For IT and business leaders, the key to success in the evolving landscape of sports, casino, gaming, and hospitality industries lies in their ability to anticipate change, invest in the right technologies, and create an organizational culture that values innovation, customer experience, and strategic growth. They must be agile, informed, and prepared to navigate the complexities of an increasingly digital, regulated, and competitive environment through the adoption of an Exponential IT mindset. We’re here to help them embrace radical transformation in IT’s purpose, governance, autonomization of core business and IT capabilities, and how IT partners with vendors and business leaders. Given our perspectives from extensive work with hotel, casino, and sports leaders, four major priorities have emerged for leaders to prioritize and act on:
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Unlock Exponential IT Capabilities |
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Embrace Autonomization Go beyond a digital strategy to lead the business with autonomous AI-powered solutions and vendor relationships that create seamless experiences across channels for the community. See more in our Digital Transformation Research Center and Artificial Intelligence Research Center. |
Understand the Implications of Generative AI in Sports, Gaming & Hospitality Info-Tech’s use case library provides practical guidance to help sports, gaming, and hospitality organizations accelerate value-driven generative AI use-case adoption. See more in our Generative AI Use Case Library for the Gaming & Hospitality Industry and AI/ML Use Case Library for Sports & Entertainment. |
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Differentiate With the Power of Data Bring together data strategy, governance, architecture, management, and literacy to unleash the power of data in your organization. Accelerate your journey with our Data and Analytics Landscape Research Center. |
Build a Robust Information Security Practice Build a robust security practice with a holistic strategy based on zero trust, a team with the right capability and capacity, and insurance against incidents with our Security Research Center. |
Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports Sector Research Resources
Info-Tech is well known for our practical, actionable blueprints and templates. We also have a rich body of content focused on Hospitality, Entertainment, Gaming & Sports that will accelerate your key initiatives. Here are some examples of how you can make the most of your membership by leveraging Info-Tech’s resources to achieve your priorities:
Want to Know More?
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