The reported decision of the regulatory authorities in Victoria, Australia, to allow some electronic table games classified as slots to be redesignated as tables appears to raise as many questions as it answers.
On the up side, Bill Lerner of Union Gaming Research in Las Vegas says it should provide an exciting new market opportunity for equipment makers. He specifically named Shuffle Master, International Game Technology (IGT), and Aristocrat Leisure in that context.
On the down side, if Victoria’s stance is adopted in other gaming jurisdictions it could cause difficulties for operators and manufacturers already operating electronic table games on floors under a slot permissions regime.
Victoria’s stance could be read as an essentially localised, market supporting one—allowing operators in the state to get round the moratorium on the number of slot machines permitted there. It seems designed in particular to help out Crown Melbourne, which reportedly wants to install up to 50 electronic table games, providing accommodation for 200 players at any one time.
It’s possible to argue it was always a little absurd from the consumer standpoint to classify as a ‘slot’ a product that looks and feels like a table and gives entertainment to players in the style of a table game.
In terms of the technology contained within electronic table games, however, they must be judged on a case-by-case basis. Will, for example, electronic table games that have previously been GLI- or BMM-certified as slots need new checks or certification to pass muster as table games in Victoria? And if they do, who is going to have to bear that cost—the operators or the manufacturers?
The Victoria decision also highlights an increasing issue within the gaming equipment industry. This is how do you distinguish between a traditional table with some electronic functions (such as video readers for cards or radio frequency identification systems for chip inventory) and a slot game with some table game-style player interactivity (such as real chips or automated card peeking)?
Will an international standard of designation develop on this issue, or will it be a ‘devil take the hindmost’ system (as seen in many gaming product markets up to this point), where the top tier jurisdictions set the standards and the rest of the industry follows?
In Macau’s case, for example, it is arguably more in operators’ interests to have electronic table games defined and regulated as slots, as there isn’t the same pressure on slot quota as there is in the table segment.
Watch this space.
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