Following a quiet opening day, the 2009 ENADA show, which closes this week, began to live up to its promise yesterday as traffic in the halls improved.

This year’s event attracted a variety of manufacturers and suppliers, many drawn to the Italian market by the prospect of legalised video lottery terminals. However, despite many companies exhibiting VLTs alongside their AWP units, many spoke of operators’ confusion over the situation.

Mauro Zaccaria, sales manager at Tecnoplay, told InterGame that the law will be scrutinised in Brussels before being passed in November.

"This is the first show that we’ve seen VLTs around," he said. "There are so many little things to understand. For now we wait to understand [the law] and start homologation."

Given the strength of the Italian AWP market, Zaccaria said that VLTs may attract more casual players but the higher maximum wins on offer will certainly bring in customers.

Johannes Mayr of Merkur said his company has been developing VLTs for the market but noted that there remains a great deal of confusion among operators, particularly due to the high cost of each VLT concession. Merkur’s VLT platform features more than 20 games and ought to be certified by April, he said.

Merkur was also on hand to show its new multigame platforms, which Mayr believes will prove popular with smaller venues, such as pubs.

"Pubs are often small in Italy and there is a limit to the number of machines so that is the advantage of multigames," he said. "They will always have fresh content."

Some of coin-op’s biggest names were represented by their Italian distributors at the show, with Faro Games and Elmac both showcasing Bay Tek’s products. LAI’s latest product innovation, the StarBlitz, was also on Faro’s booth, while Benchmark’s newest games are being distributed by Elmac.

Sega’s XD Theatre, meanwhile, proved a popular draw among visitors to the exhibition and the company’s Jean-Luc Dieudonne described the show as a success.

"It has been really brilliant. Absolutely fantastic," he said. "We’ve been really busy all day."