The cynic in me is driven by 48 years of experience of operators in the UK and the way they behave. That being the case, the demise of Sceptre in its present form should herald a situation where the retailers will look for someone else to step up to the mark and take on the business - at a price.
The fact is that the business model no longer stands up to scrutiny – a fact that the outgoing Sceptre Leisure CEO Ken Turner has himself complained about in the past couple of years.
So who’s going to break ranks?
Not so sure that anyone will. While that has been something I have voiced before – admittedly more in hope than certainty – the prospects are there for the first green shoots of common sense, perhaps.
What gives the conviction more stability is the fact that such a high proportion of the UK single-site operating industry is now in foreign ownership. Gamestec is part of Novomatic. Now Gauselmann has upped its minority stake in Sceptre to the acquisition of the assets.
The important thing now is whether it can hold on to those assets – or indeed, whether it wants to hold on to them as they are. The company, under its new management, will have to renegotiate its contracts with the retailers. The opportunity is there to turn away anything that doesn’t make sense.
The Achilles heel may be the Independent Operators Association. With all due respect to the IOA, it is an amalgamation of independents and it only takes one loose cannon… The divide-and-conquer tactics of the breweries and more recently the retailers may just not work this time, if all three elements concerned here stand their ground.
One thing is for sure: the Germans and the Austrians are not to be messed with. There are retailers who are sensible; those who recognise that operators have to make a decent return in order to contribute to the development of better machines. But there remain those that are basically accountants, answerable only to the bottom line. They are not there for the long term and seek only a pat on the head from upstairs before they are rewarded with a move into another part of the retailer’s business.
They will be the problem and anyone who breaks ranks from the operating side will also be the problem. If the former can be overcome and the latter stand square, then we might just see the UK Category C market rejuvenated.
