It is amazing how gossip in the aisles of a trade show can escalate. An innocent comment at the start of the first day, can be taken, repeated and embellished so that by the third day it is out of all proportion.
On the first day of the show, some American visitors asked me why EAG didn’t simply move to Olympia in London rather than base itself out of ExCeL. I pointed out that Olympia was on two levels and there had been bitter recriminations from the UK amusement and gaming industry when they were moved off the floor at Earls Court and up into the balcony area, so that risk could not be countenanced again.
By the end of day two I was getting accused of having put out the rumour that the show was definitely moving back to Olympia…
In the same way, the aisle gossip tended to suggest that the Gauselmann-Sceptre deal is now off – for a variety of increasingly imaginative reasons. Casting around for another set of circumstances which might fit a useful outcome, there began a rumour (not from me this time) that instead the Gauselmann Group is now looking at Crown Direct. After all, that would give them a UK distributor who is now newly into manufacturing Category C machines.
As Crown makes them at Jem Simmons’ Gemini, perhaps Gauselmann is buying them too? All grist to the mill…
