The first Global Gaming Expo took place October 13, 2001 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, featuring 375 corporate exhibitors, nearly 10,000 attendees, and VIP keynote speakers such as Academy Award-winning actressWhoopi Goldberg and then-chairman and CEO of MGM StudiosAlex Yemenidjian. In previous years, LVCC had been the site of GEM Communications' World Gaming Congress & Expo, which had maintained a partnership with and was essentially unrivaled as the industry's preeminent conference. After failing to negotiate a contract renewal with GEM in 2000, however, the AGA elected to launch G2E as a rival exhibition that would be "by the industry and for the industry." Its first year was also WGCE's last; sixth months after the inaugural Global Gaming Expo, AGA bought out WGCE, establishing G2E as North America's largest exhibition for the gaming-entertainment industry. In 2010, the AGA announced that the tenth annual expo that November would be the last to take place at before a move to the privately-owned Sands Expo, where G2E has remained. The change of venue was accompanied by a return to the exhibition's original time of year, with the AGA citing the need for "more breathing room between major international gaming events" among its reasons for moving back to early October. G2E features educational sessions that typically run from Monday through Thursday of the conference week, as well as an expo hall open from Tuesday through Thursday where hundreds of exhibitor companies showcase products and services., annual total show attendance has consistently topped 25,000, and in 2017 G2E was recognized as one of the 25 fastest-growing trade shows by attendance.
Specifically targeting the growing Asian gaming industry, the annual Global Gaming Expo Asia is, like its larger American counterpart, presented by the American Gaming Association and organized by Reed Exhibitions. In 2006, the same year Macau's gambling industry surpassed that of Las Vegas in gross gaming revenues, Global Gaming Expo acquired the Asian Gaming Expo from the Australasian Gaming Machine Manufacturers Association, and announced that it would rebrand the annual event as G2E Asia. The convention debuted at the Macau Tower June 1314, 2007, shortly before the opening of G2E Asia's long-term home, The Venetian Macao, which as of 2019 has housed the expo in every year since. In 2019, G2E Asia expanded its scope with the announcement of the inaugural G2E Asia @ the Philippines exhibition, to take place December 34 of that year in cooperation with the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation. Organizers selected the MarriottManila, part of the Resorts World Manilaintegrated resort, as the venue for the new event.
