Spain, with its 17 semi-autonomous regions, has often been a frustrating market for gaming and amusement equipment suppliers – could that all be about to change?
The Spanish market has always been a complex one, with 17 semi-autonomous regions, free to impose their own special ingredients to the national machine legislation recipe and requiring manufacturers to go through an individual and sometimes complex homologation process in order to be approved for operation.
However, when Mariano Rajoy came to power in December last year, he vowed to open up the country to allow greater movement of goods. A new law to this effect will be introduced in the second quarter of 2013. This would effectively create one process of homologation for machines for the entire country.
Undoubtedly, the Austrian giant Novomatic could see the possibilities offered by an open market in Spain when it finalised its purchase of the casino slot business from Unidesa – the manufacturing and distribution subsidiary of one of Spain’s largest gaming companies, Cirsa - in September. The deal included intellectual property rights, designs, patents trademarks and inventory relating to manufacture, sale and service of casino machines.
Enric Barba, general manager of Unidesa, said at the time: “This transaction is an important part of our B2B division’s strategy to focus on the Spanish AWP market (bars, arcades and bingo halls) and gaming interconnectivity systems.” In September this year Unidesa also signed a deal to distribute Bally Wulff products exclusively in all of Spain.
This article can be read in full in the December issue of InterGame.
