Interview: Daniel Lindsay - Aristocrat

Daniel Lindsay's promotion at Aristocrat Europe to general manager sales and marketing has coincided with considerable fresh activity by the company which, in Lindsay's view, "has not punched its weight in Europe for some time."

The fact that it is doing so now is as much to the credit of Nick Khin, executive general manager, who took over the reins of the company in 2006 as to the energy of Lindsay, who was business development manager at the London-based company until his elevation in July of this year.

They, and a strong and aggressive team at Aristocrat Europe, have widened the base of the company to the extent where it is now tackling the limited payout machine market too, with the opening of a new base in Spain.

There has been considerable restructuring at Aristocrat Europe, said Lindsay, and “it has worked well, with an expanded range and an expanded sales force.” He has just seen the addition of Milana Baysangurova, a Russian-speaker working within the central European sales team.

“The changes have taken time, and there is still a little work to do, but generally the restructuring is now in place and operating well.”
It has also seen the promotion of some members of staff who have “performed exceptionally well and consistently for the company,” including members of the nine-strong sales and four-man marketing teams.

Lindsay has been with the company since June 2005, just prior to the announcement of the joint venture with major Slovenian multiplayer producer Elektroncek. Since then, Aristocrat Europe has, in Lindsay’s words, “looked at many things which we had previously not considered – and done so with great support from our Australian head office.”

This year saw the European launch of a new cabinet, Veridian, a new operating platform, Gen7, and a raft of new game titles. But Aristocrat’s ambitions go beyond increasing its ship and floor share in the European casino scene.

“We have been in Europe for a long time,” said Lindsay, “but we haven’t met our potential yet. We want to address that now.”
That ambition includes the street market for the first time. “There are some goliath street markets in Europe,” said Lindsay, “with at least 1,000,000 limited payout machines in total - way beyond the kind of numbers of casino slots existent in Europe.”

Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy are all very major markets within that street market. “We have just launched a machine for the Spanish street market, but it doesn’t mean that we will approach all of these markets simultaneously.”

Lindsay was keen to emphasise that the casino slots and AWP (amusement with prizes or limited payout machines) markets are essentially different. “We don’t treat the major manufacturers who have been supplying these markets for years (and who are experts at it) lightly. In Spain, for example, there are giant companies like Cirsa and Franco for whom we have great respect as AWP producers.

“But we also have to recognise that in terms of casino slots, there is limited organic growth in Europe. There are other factors too, such as the trend towards spending disposable income much more carefully these days, smoking bans and other effects which hit both slots and AWPs equally such as dynamic regulations. The size of the AWP market, however, cannot be ignored. It has taken us a lot of time and a lot of effort for us to realise our first machine for the street market.”

He said that the company has a number of licenses in Spain already - the country has 17 separate provinces each of which has its own testing processes - and was forming alliances with distributors. “Elektroncek has also been very successful in Spain with its multiplayer games, using the well-established Dosniha of Majorca as its distributor.”

Will the company enter the Italian, British and German AWP markets? “We watch all major markets,” said Lindsay and he added, carefully: “I would not rule out the possibility of having an involvement in one of those markets.”

But for Lindsay and Aristocrat, the AWP business is an add-on, albeit an important one, to the company’s principal activities. “We are a maker of multiline video-based jackpot machines for casino markets; that is where our established strength is and where the majority of our efforts are focused.”

The line-up of fresh casino games for the last quarter of the year in Europe is a substantial indicator of a wider and even more intensive offering that the company as a whole will bring to the shop window which is Las Vegas in November.