InterGame’s David Snook reviews the latest data on AWP machines from Europe’s leading markets.
THE quote, “we ignore what is happening in other European jurisdictions at our absolute peril,” came from one of Europe’s industry leaders, in a recent conversation with InterGame.
The question posed was: “Does what happens in one jurisdiction influence other administrations across borders?”
If his response is correct, then the latest data flowing into the Brussels office of Euromat, the federation of European coin machine trade associations, will provide grounds for severe indigestion to suppliers and operators in the street market, for the most part running up to a million AWP machines or local derivatives.
Each year the member countries of Euromat (14 of them, with France and Hungary listed as “observers”) submit data recording the situation in each of their domestic markets. Each year some fail to do so, but from the information gleaned from those that do, a reasonable picture emerges from across the continent.
The 2014 submissions have come from Belgium, Italy, Spain, the UK, Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Serbia and Germany. As usual, they reflect a very diverse market with many individual peculiarities, but the common thread is that in every instance there remains some form of the Amusement With Prizes (AWP) machine, designed to give pleasurable play on a gaming machine with stakes and prizes balanced in such a way as to fall short of “hard gambling.”
This is the AWP’s original concept and largely it remains that way today, although some of the prize levels have arguably crept up to a point, which borders on a level of gaming which, if not “hard” is at least “firm.”
In every case, the lawmakers are combining with the national treasuries to milk the industry of taxes, sometimes to the exclusion of commercial expediency. And also in every case, there are increasing levels of cross-border liaison between those lawmakers and tax authorities, as they look over shoulders and scan regulations for fresh ideas.
Read the full article in the October issue of InterGame.
