The bid to buy out major UK operator Gamestec, with its 25,000 machines, along with manufacturer Bell Fruit Games, is understood to have gone to the Office of Fair Trading.
Austria’s Novomatic is the buyer and it will immediately give the group a strong hold on the UK operating as well as manufacturing sector - it already has Astra. It is understood from our sources that a ruling from the OFT - if positive - should permit the deal to go through by the end of April or early May.
The question being asked by many within the UK street market sector is how the main competitors of Novomatic will react. The Gauselmann Group in Germany is head-to-head in its own huge domestic AWP market with the Novomatic companies, Löwen and Crown. The two companies appear to be going head-to-head in the Spanish market too.
How will the Gauselmann Group react in the UK? Gauselmann already has its own subsidiary in Britain, Blueprint Gaming, the high-technology development company, but it also has strategic partnerships with adult gaming centre operator Praesepe and with major street operator Sceptre Leisure.
Blueprint director Richard Wilson commented: “The UK remains of considerable interest to the Gauselmann Group. The ongoing situation in Britain will be carefully monitored and the group will react as the market opportunities develop.”
Meanwhile, the other main AWP manufacturers, Barcrest and Games Media, are under the control of Scientific Games. Informed sources suggest that it is not anticipated that the referral to the OFT will be a problem because there are few overlaps between what Astra and BFG/Gamestec do in the UK and the precedents set in the Barcrest/Scientific Games investigation.
