“It’s still early days, but consumers have been very positive towards the new VLTs and venue operators are excited about the potential of the machines. Over the next few months, we expect the first VLTs to be very well received in Italy. Over the next year, it will soon become clear which VLT products are performing the best and generating the highest incomes.”

The AAMS has authorised about 57,000 VLTs, and they will have a major impact on a country already in love with gaming to the tune of ¤53bn annually – roughly half of that on slots, likely to be the gambling category that the VLT market most resembles.

The rollout was not without headaches. AAMS helped the operators by cracking down on illegal systems that it was feared might hold back revenue from VLTs, most notably the Internet terminals called “totems”; although only legal for sports betting, they were widely used for other forms of online gaming.

But the regulator also had to get tough on the positioning of VLTs within premises, reminding operators that they are only allowed in dedicated gaming rooms – not, for example, in bars.

Testing, too, was arduous. Recalled Inspired’s Alvarez: “The testing process is much more demanding than for the [slots] market, as it encompasses a full central system, auditing, random-number generation and a wide-area networked gaming solution. Having been through the process, we are very aware of the thorough testing process and how many challenges there are for suppliers with less flexible platforms. I predict that many system suppliers will take a long time and significant investment to achieve full certification.”

But, of course, it is technology suppliers including Inspired, Spielo, Aristocrat, and Novomatic that stand to benefit from the arrival of VLTs – also known as Comma 6b machines, in contrast to Comma 6a slots – almost as much as the operators.

Inspired launched its Open VLT platform in Italy with content from Max Gaming and Psiclone as well as its own, soon adding games from Magic Dreams and Merkur too; it has just signed a deal to supply at least 1000 VLTs with Merkur content to Atlantis World’s B Plus network.

Cabinets, likewise, can be supplied either by Inspired itself – with a lineup including the HD Storm cabinet – or by third parties.

Other vendors are also bringing their best-performing games to Italy’s VLTs. For example, Apex Gaming as well as the Inspired/Merkur partnership is supplying B Plus, holder of the largest number of VLT licences (about 12,000, with Lottomatica in second place). Among its innovations will be five progressive jackpots for the Leonardo’s Code, Arriva, Ocean Tale, Legend of the Sphinx and Red Hot Fruits games, offering players a chance to win up to ¤500,000.

Online threat?

Yet VLTs are also facing competition. Online slots, expected to be legal from March next year, are likely to have maximum stakes far greater than the VLTs’ ¤10 – probably in the hundreds – and it has been suggested that minimum payout could approach 95 percent, against 85 percent for VLTs. Both those factors, as well as the inherent convenience of online gaming, may pull some customers away from VLTs less than a year after their launch.

Indeed, it is believed that lobbying from VLT networks persuaded the AAMS to delay the launch of online slots, although poker and casino games will be available to Italian Internet users sooner. The VLT operators are also reportedly unhappy that they weren‘t promised favoured treatment in applications for online licences.

In general, though, the launch has been so well received that Greece is expected to use the Italian model as a basis for its own introduction of VLTs – and some Italian operators, such as Lottomatica, are already looking east to the next new market.

Details haven’t been issued yet, but Greece is expected to simultaneously regulate online gambling and VLTs, possibly giving the partly-state-owned betting company Opap the task of issuing VLT licences, and perhaps even granting it a temporary monopoly while that process is completed.

And although the Greek market is much smaller than Italy’s – it has about a fifth of the population – the new systems could, if anything, make a bigger impact there. Slots are rare in Greece, which has just 5000 in casinos and, according to estimates, about the same number illegally installed elsewhere.

So rather than an Italian-style situation where existing slot operators enhance their location with VLTs, the outcome in Greece could be the emergence of a new kind of gaming venue.

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