David Snook finds that the street market in Slovenia does brisk business, but mainly at the top end - slot halls and casinos...
The amusement machine market in Slovenia is rather like most people’s conception of the country - a little vague. In fact, most would struggle to place Slovenia on a map and many regularly confuse the country with Slovakia.
That is not to be disrespectful to the Slovenians. It is a comparatively new country, one of the segments which went to make up the old Yugoslavia and now, like the other components, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, independent since 1992, joining the EC in 2004.
The capital, Ljubljana, is the only conurbation of any real size and even then, it is a small city. The country itself is extremely beautiful, mountainous and emerging as a popular ski destination and in the warmer months Lake Bled is a ‘new’ destination.
Slovenia is almost landlocked, bordered by several other countries, but has just 42 kilometres of coastline, sandwiched between the narrow spit of land in Italy in which Trieste is the notable city, and the long Croatian coastline to the south.
So much for the geography. This small country with only 2,000,000 people is very significant in the gaming industry. While many people might have their problems pointing to Slovenia on a map, they will all have heard of it - at least, the people in the international gaming machine market will have heard of it.
Slovenia has become the world’s powerhouse in multiplayer automated table games, roulettes mainly, but also blackjack, variations on dice games, bingo, etc. It has a dozen or so producers of this segment of the industry, led by the founding company Alfastreet and the major spin-offs, Gold Club and Elektroncek (Interblock).
Those are essentially casino games, of course, at least in their nature. But they are probably more widespread, numerically, in the street market, in arcades and ‘slot halls’ depending upon the jurisdiction. Slovenian multiplayers are into just about every legitimate market in the world and in Europe in particular they feature strongly in emerging arcade sectors, such as Italy’s new Comma 6a regulations which permit multiplayer casino games under AWP stakes and prizes. Spain is also an attractive market for this type of game and hundreds of Interblock games in particular have gone into the Spanish market.
Wherever else the multiplayer has a function, such as the Netherlands, Belgium and throughout eastern Europe, the Slovenian manufacturers have made significant inroads. It began, interestingly, in 1996, when an Italian casino operator shipped in a new novel device from Taiwan, a multiplayer roulette game from the Fulgent company. It was a very early model, with typical malfunctions, but its appeal was significant enough for the casino owner to ask Alfastreet, then a furniture supplier, whether it could make something similar.
Alfastreet made its first roulette, was quickly joined by the owner of what was to become a major rival, Gold Club and within a few months Interblock (Elektroncek) also set up in business. A rash of spin-off companies from these three majors was to follow. In fact, all three of the original companies remain very much in business and are industry leaders, taking their small country into the unlikely realms of industry leadership.
But at home, the street market is in reality almost non-existent. Slovenia’s law-makers made some early decisions about the gaming industry and effectively kept away from the AWP machine. Slovenia has just two types of gaming, full-scale casinos with live table games - there are just 12 of them out of original plans to issue maximum 15 licences - and ‘arcades,’ which are in reality slots halls, because they are casinos in every respect except that they don’t have live tables.
The Slovenian Government originally planned for 45 licences in this sector, but only 38 have been issued. The arcades are full of the big casino slot names, IGT, WMS, Bally, Atronic, etc. and of course, the generic multiplayer games which are almost exclusively sourced in their own country where the range and variety is rich.
Slovenian arcades must have a minimum of 50 player positions and a maximum of 200. They have to have online monitoring systems - and even that tends to be Slovenian, designed and installed mostly by the Nova Gorica company Advansys. They are savagely taxed at a total of 38 per cent of the revenues, but no-one is closing down.
The slots halls are relatively well spread, through the capital Ljubljana and the other larger towns, with a heavy concentration on the border with Italy, notably in the Nova Gorica and Sezana areas, close to the major Italian city of Trieste. There is no distinction between the ‘real’ casinos and the slots halls or arcades - all call themselves ‘casinos’ and all are up to a very high standard as competition is brisk.
They thrive on the Italian border, notably, because 95 per cent of their customers are Italian. They flood over the border in their thousands, only an hour by car from Venice, minutes from Trieste and a ferryboat ride from some of the other Italian Adriatic ports for weekends. With only four casinos in the whole of Italy, Italian players enjoy their gaming in Slovenia, or across other borders into Monaco, Switzerland, Austria or down the long Dalmatian coast of Croatia.
Business then, for the Slovenian ‘street market,’ is brisk, but it remains very much at the top end, effectively all casinos.
There are elements of the wider amusement industry in Slovenia, but precious little of it in face of competition from slots without stakes and prizes limits. There are a few skill games with prizes in Slovenian pubs and bars, a scattering of pool, table football, electronic darts and other tavern-friendly games, but very little in the way of video games and novelties. That is not surprising in a small country in terms of concentration of population.
Slovenia might be hard to place on the map, but there are few in the wider international gaming industry who will not be aware of its existence when they look at the quality and quantity of suppliers of multiplayer games.
