FOR the second consecutive year, the sun shone bright for the Park Avenue Open Day in London, UK, on June 6.
The stone-splitting sunshine suited Electrocoin’s traditional Greek-style barbecue nicely, with people making their way over to UDC’s offices next door for afternoon tea as the day progressed.
Some new product was on show from JNC, UDC and Crown Leisure among others and both Matt Bland for UDC and Kevin Weir for Electrocoin reported a satisfactory outcome to the day, passing on news of a successful start to the year for the many UK seaside arcade owners who called in for the day.
For those visitors who did not visit Open Day prior to around the year 2000, the current format will be very familiar to them. However, those with a longer history in this industry will recall that 11 companies were based in and around Park Avenue and Brent Crescent throughout the 1980s. All of these threw open their doors and invited the amusement machine industry into their premises on the same day. Each company supplied their own refreshments and the whole street was buzzing with industry chat. However, one by one, these companies relocated, leaving just Electrocoin and UDC. Nevertheless, the day continues to be a popular event for many in the international community’s calendar.
A strong theme this year was the possible ramifications of the UK government’s recent changes to its gaming law. When we caught up with him, BACTA president Gabi Stergides said he had been asked about implementation of changes to fixed-odds betting terminals stakes and prizes “about 24 times already today”.
Intergame made it 25.
“Obviously, we still have to make sure it gets done in a timely fashion and not in 10 years’ time. That is definitely the subject of today.”
He believes the decision to slash the FOBT stake from £100 to £2 will ultimately benefit the sector. “I think that the toxicity that has been associated with the industry because of FOBTs has been eliminated. It flavoured every conversation to do with gaming machines.”
Although he recognises this as a win, he said this was no time for the industry to rest on its laurels. “The rest of us still have to up our game, up our social responsibility, and we still have to crack down on anti-money laundering and make sure players are protected. All of these things are what we need to look more closely at in the future.
“As the commissioner said when the government was giving its decision: ‘You’ve got nothing this time and if you want more of a boost in the future you’ve got to start lifting your game to justify us giving you more things.’
“We are naturally disappointed in not getting a lift in Cat C and B3 machines or any of the Cat D redemption games, but we are optimistic because they could have imposed mandatory player tracking or player time limits, which would have been game over for the industry.”
He believes this spells out an opportunity for the industry to come together and “have a sensible discussion about how to make a game that is the right balance of entertaining and profitable and that isn’t a toxic product.”
Matt Bland explained why the event is still important to the company. “We get to see people we haven’t seen in a while and show off what is doing well this year. Having said that, it couldn’t be described as a sales event, that’s not the main aim. We want to chat and catch up and find out how people are doing. But we do always make sales, so we get the best of both worlds really.”
He said the event happens in early June because “once the second week of June hits everyone is going to be non-stop for the rest of the summer, especially for the seaside operations. Less so for the AGC but even so more people are on holidays and you won’t expect to see them until autumn.”
BACTA’s Charitable trust ran a raffle with prizes including a 30ins television, hampers and bottles of wine and champagne – raising almost £1000 to be shared between the organisation’s four chosen charities: Royal Marsden, Great Ormond Trust Hospital, the Anthony Nolan Cancer Trust and the Teenage Cancer Trust.
BACTA’s events coordinator, Parven Sharma, said the team was delighted with the result and congratulated Liam Cheesman of Prasepe and Reece Newman of JNC, who won the two top prizes of the television and magnum bottle of champagne, respectively.
Simon Rose, business development manager of Heber, said the event works because it’s not really a show. “We don’t really need any of this,” he said pointing to the merchandise his company had brought along, “that’s not what this is about. It’s about the people. And that what’s special about this event. Show me another industry where there is this much friendliness among competitors. I think you would struggle.”
Ian Donegan
Intergame June 29, 2018
