The Entrepreneur Behind the Machines: Jeff Rehberger’s Gaming Venture

How a Cornell and LSE-trained operator built one of Illinois’ largest video gaming terminal networks from the ground up.

Most people who end up running large-scale gaming operations come up through the industry itself. Jeff Rehberger took a different path. Before becoming CEO of Lucky Lincoln Gaming, he conducted postgraduate research in economic history in London, consulted on government financial systems in Washington, and studied the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis from within the US Treasury.

That background does not look like a straight line to video gaming terminals in bars and restaurants in Illinois. Rehberger would argue it is exactly the preparation the job required.

Rehberger launched Lucky Lincoln Gaming in 2013, the same year Illinois’ licensed video gaming terminal market began to mature into something operators could build serious businesses around. He had completed a master’s degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics that year, following a bachelor’s degree in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University. His earlier career included consulting at CGI Federal on government RFP responses and financial systems implementations for USAID, as well as an internship at the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Stability during the TARP period.

That combination of economics training, systems consulting, and exposure to regulated federal environments gave Rehberger a perspective on building in compliance-driven environments that most gaming operators lacked at the start. He approached video gaming as a technology-and-operations business that happened to sit within the hospitality sector.

Lucky Lincoln Gaming now operates across more than 250 locations in Illinois, with approximately 1,500 video gaming terminals in the field and a team of more than 75 employees handling installation, service, and partner relationships. That scale came from building infrastructure around the locations: service systems that allow for remote diagnostics, AI-supported tools for operational analysis, and a partner model that treats each location as a long-term relationship.

In a sector where many operators rely on manual processes and reactive maintenance, Rehberger has pushed toward automation and data-driven decision-making. The company has developed systems that allow technicians to resolve machine issues remotely in a significant share of cases, reducing downtime for location partners and improving economics for both parties. For bar and restaurant owners who depend on gaming revenue as a meaningful line item, that reliability carries real weight.

Running a terminal operator in Illinois means navigating one of the more demanding regulatory environments in the country. The Illinois Gaming Board licenses operators, locations, and individual terminals, and the compliance obligations that accompany this structure require sustained legal, operational, and administrative attention. Rehberger’s early career in government consulting and regulated financial systems gave him a working familiarity with that kind of environment before he encountered it in gaming.

His long-term goal is direct: make Lucky Lincoln Gaming the largest terminal operator in Illinois. The path he has built toward that goal runs through service quality, technology investment, and location partner relationships that hold under competitive pressure. If you are a bar or restaurant owner in Illinois evaluating terminal operator options, Lucky Lincoln’s pitch centers on those variables.

The machines get the attention. The systems behind them are where the business actually lives. That is the distinction Rehberger has built his operation around.