If it was let to me, I’d bring back a handle on an AWP machine and I’d reintroduce the visible dropping jackpot, but I’m old and only a hack anyway so what do I know?

David Snook

But something needs to happen with pub machines, and probably not just in the UK either, for machines go into pubs all over Europe and the problem remains the same, as I can see - folk buying their drink and then being asked to drop money into a gambling device with winnings dependent upon what combination of symbols appear on three reels.

OK, these days it might be four reels, or even five, or criss-cross combinations; it may be a digital presentation; it may have sound effects and game trails and it may pay out £100 and the name delicately changes to Category C as it can hardly be an "amusement with prizes" with that kind of pay-out level. In essence, however, not much has changed since Charles Fey developed the fruit machine in San Francisco in 1893.

Therein lies the problem.

Forty years ago I learned that statistic that only two per cent of those who go into a pub more than twice a week actually play AWPs (or Cat Cs) regularly. The same statistic applies today. Again, there’s the problem; except that it’s worse, because there are now fewer pubs and fewer "drinker’s pubs" with all levels of haute cuisine taking over from the bags of crisps and pork scratchings and therefore less room for the machines.

It is, in short, a constantly contracting market. So when the trade association in the UK goes to its authorities seeking an upgrade in prize levels it is really only going to keep things as they are.

This quest for increases in stakes and prizes is known as the Triennial Review, but that is an historic misnomer. It has for some time ceased to be a regular-as-clockwork casting of the rule over the industry. Had it been a real triennial, then it would be this year, but now it is likely to be 2018 before anything is actually in force to supplant the current £1 stake and £100 prize. 

That means that the industry needs to know somewhere around 12 months from now, what the new levels will be in order to prepare machines for a January, 2018 launch.

And what will they produce? More of the same? More bells and whistles?

It is very worrying. As things stand, all that will do is account for inflation and rising costs. What needs to be done is widen the player base. I know we all keep talking about that, but it remains the holy grail of pub machine objectives. Bells and whistles alone won’t do it; even handles and visible dropping jackpots won’t do it. But they will certainly help.

It needs out-of-the-box thinking; creativity on a grand scale. It needs infinitely greater minds than mine to come up with the solution.

In the meantime, the status remains quo, the costs are going up – and they cannot be passed on, of course, like any other industry – and the competition remains potent. The industry’s shopping list for the authorities will certainly be a combination of increased stakes and/or prizes, matched by correspondingly proportionate reductions or curbs on FOBTs to bring what the industry calls "the level playing field".

As always with governments and civil servants, the excuse is that "there are other pressing national affairs which must take precedence." Heard that one for 30 years too. This time it will be the EU, staying in or pulling out, and the fall-out from the result, whichever way.

We remain, sadly, small beer in the greater scheme of things, but small or not, we are like polar bears, balancing on a diminishing iceberg.