Electrocoin’s John Stergides gives his overview of the North American market
The old football saying: “He knows where the goal is,” is a useful analogy when it comes to John Stergides and the US market. Fifty years of experience in the international amusement machine business has given him an intimate knowledge of how things work and where.
Through the 1980s and onwards, Stergides was responsible for bringing the cream of the US industry’s amusement machine ingenuity across the Atlantic, from redemption games to pinball and from table games to novelties, and then distributing them throughout continental Europe.
His North London showrooms are constantly filled with the best of what’s new and is a magnet for FEC operators. In addition, he has his own arcade operation to give the new games an extra level of testing before releasing them.
In recent times, he told us, he had noted a fresh demand for pinball. Stergides has developed a close relationship with Stern, the Chicago-based manufacturer, and is an afficionado of Stern’s new technologies that takes pinballing online.
“The pandemic is where the trend can be traced back to,” he told us. “For some reason, that was the initial inspiration for the current renewed enthusiasm for pinball in FECs, especially in the UK market. Beyond that, a strong demand has grown for pinball games to be sold to private homes – despite the recession.”
His knowledge of the market, however, crosses in the other direction too. Frequent visits to the US may have been inspired by his well-known passion for ribs from the restaurant chain Carson’s, but he has an acute awareness of trends and influencers in the American domestic market.
“The demise of the shopping mall was probably already on the way before Covid-19,” he said, “but the pandemic accelerated its impact with the alternative of online retail. It served to drive an awareness of the positive angles to shopping from home and millions of Americans have gone for it. In the malls, therefore, revenues are down and footfall is down and that has impacted the anchor stores and the anchor entertainments.
“But I think that in the next year or two, things will turn around in that sector. I think that people will start to go back to malls as destination retail and entertainment complexes and those locations that have survived will find things much better. But the mall operators, the stores and the entertainment and dining facilities have had to sharpen up their acts to trigger that appeal. Now FECs are even more a vital ingredient in the shopping mall experience and landlords are learning to appreciate that.”
He points to some vacant malls having anchor stores, notably Sears, being taken over by imaginative entrepreneurs and installing wide-ranging entertainment facilities – not just amusement games, but other elements such as laser tag, climbing walls, ropeways, escape rooms and bowling.
“A fine example of this factor is the Gravity concept which fits all that pattern exactly in the UK and illustrates what is happening in the US market too.”
Stergides also points at other examples of imaginative concepts, such as the bar arcade, a drinking establishment with retro games for the middle-agers to relive the fun of their youth. Many now add on more modern amusement devices to spread the experience wider. “The bar arcade business is by no means new; it’s been around for some years, but it has traversed the Atlantic well,” said Stergides.
“We have quite a few of them now in the UK and in other parts of Europe. You could argue that the entire concept was pioneered by Dave & Buster’s, but perhaps on a smaller scale.”
Fresh technology is also appearing on the market, he added. The use of VR and AR has arguably shrugged off the bias created by its unsuccessful introduction 20 years ago and the newer technologies have proved to be enduring. “This is driven by reliability in the equipment, better service, improved video content and the costs are now more acceptable.”
Alongside all of this, the payments business also benefited from the pandemic in the sense that cash became less acceptable from a health point of view and accelerated the development of cashless gaming. The use of cash, he said, is constantly eroding. “Cashless systems are more generally acceptable and understood and for the operator the benefits are inarguable.”
Most American FEC operators, he said, have relatively few overriding issues before them. Many are concerned at the lack of new indigenous developers coming through and that most of the games built in the US today have their roots in China. “They also fear the games brought directly into North America from China and sold at ridiculous prices will cause problems because of the inevitable lack of spare parts and those who are tempted to buy find their investment flying out of the window.”
A Man of Experience Published in Intergame Magazine, May 2024, Volume 30, issue 5, Page 36
