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Operators Discuss Pinball on Location

Pintastic New England·video·54m 27s·analyzed·Nov 28, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Operators report strong pinball resurgence on location with 82% adoption; discuss game mix strategy and business challenges.

Summary

Operators and industry professionals discuss the business dynamics of pinball on location, citing Replay Magazine survey data showing 82% of operators run pinball machines (up from ~40% two decades ago). Key topics include game mix strategy, location types (multi-pin vs. single-machine venues), revenue splits, operator pain points around parts availability, and how tournaments and community engagement drive location success.

Key Claims

  • 82% of operators now run pinball machines, up from approximately 40% twenty years ago

    high confidence · Host citing Replay Magazine August 2023 operator survey data

  • Stern Connect provides real-time diagnostics including switch-level error alerts to operators via phone notifications

    high confidence · Dave Medour describing Stern Connect's Professional route monitoring capabilities

  • Node board components (e.g., Node 8B, 8D4) for Stern Spike 1 games are becoming unavailable in the US market, with sourcing limited to international suppliers at high cost

    high confidence · Brian McCauley describing current service challenges with Ghostbusters machines

  • Some location owners are now requesting 30-70 revenue splits (30% operator, 70% location) instead of traditional 50-50 or 60-40 splits

    high confidence · Dave Medour and Brian McCauley discussing emerging negotiation trends in southern Maine/Boston markets

  • New Stern games cost $7,400 base price; specialized games can reach $76,000-$80,000 (e.g., Superbike VR machine)

    high confidence · Brian McCauley citing recent installation costs

  • Pinball play pricing has increased from 50 cents (1986) to $1.00 by 2019-2020, but operators only retain 50-60 cents per dollar collected

    high confidence · Dave Medour explaining historical pricing and revenue split economics

  • About 48% of operators run a mix of retro and new pinball machines; 30% run only newer machines; less than 18% run no pinball

    high confidence · Host citing Replay Magazine August 2023 survey

  • Stern Pinball recommends 80-20 or 70-30 revenue splits favoring the operator to encourage pinball placement

    high confidence · Michael Green, Senior Manager of Location Entertainment for Stern Pinball

  • Mitch Chip Curtis operates approximately four pinball-focused locations and is opening a fifth location

Notable Quotes

  • “82% of operators say they run pinball. And I think 20 years ago that was probably more like 40%. So I think we've had a really good resurgence out in locations.”

    Host@ 3:04 — Core thesis demonstrating significant market recovery for location pinball

  • “We have two gorgeous Ghostbusters. We can't get a Node board 8D4. It really hampers putting machines on location.”

    Brian McCauley@ 20:49 — Critical supply chain issue affecting operator ability to maintain machines

  • “When you want 25 brand new games and they're $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 a pop, but you only have 250 people in your location at a given time, it's great that you want 25 pieces, but I don't see where that's going to help me any.”

    Dave Medour@ 23:27 — Illustrates tension between location owner expectations and operator ROI requirements

  • “If you're using Stern Pinball games and you have them insider connected, you also have insider-connected map, which is also drawing players to the location.”

    Michael Green, Senior Manager of Location Entertainment, Stern Pinball@ 28:57 — Stern's pitch for software ecosystem value beyond coin drop revenue

  • “Mitch has four locations right now. He's opening another one. He's able to maintain and do this passionate love he has for pinball... Mitch is at his locations once or twice a week, he's waxing, washing, he's doing maintenance.”

    Brian McCauley@ 32:43 — Describes operational model for pinball-focused showcase locations

  • “We have locations that are 30-70, which is 70% the operator, 30% the business. It is starting to change... We have locations that are asking us to do the reverse, do 30 us and 70 them.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyReplay MagazinepublicationDave MedourpersonBrian McCauleypersonMichael GreenpersonMitch Chip CurtispersonAction Jackson AmusementscompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyAmerican Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Operator-location revenue negotiations shifting unfavorably; some locations now demanding 30-70 splits (30% operator) instead of traditional 50-70 operator advantage

    high · Dave Medour and Brian McCauley both report emerging trend in southern Maine/Boston markets; locations claiming ability to self-operate

  • ?

    business_signal: Operator industry showing growth; Brian McCauley reports company expansion with 3 new locations (20+ machines each) opening within 3 months; larger operator (Action Jackson) reports continued growth with 350 locations and 1,400 machines

    high · Brian McCauley: '3 new locations opening in next 3 months'; David Jackson quote via host: 'I'm still growing' with 50-year history

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament and league organization identified as key revenue driver for multi-pin locations; weekly/monthly events increase foot traffic on slower nights and boost ancillary food/beverage sales

    high · Michael Green highlights tournament scheduling on slow nights; Dave Medour and Brian McCauley confirm league/tournament model drives location success; host emphasizes Mitch Chip Curtis's tournament-focused model

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Pinball actively supporting operator ecosystem through Insider Connect monitoring, Insider-connected map for player discovery, and revenue split recommendations (70-30/80-20 favoring operators)

    high · Michael Green presents Stern's pro-operator stance; emphasizes Insider Connect value for remote diagnostics and promotion; recommends favorable splits

  • ?

    design_philosophy: IP/theme choice and ruleset difficulty significantly impact location revenue; accessible rulesets (Guardians of the Galaxy, Super Mario Bros) outperform complex rulesets (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) even with appealing IP in children's venues

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.163

0:00
We want to talk about the business situation. I've got this survey from the traditional trade publication Replay Magazine. The August issue just put out their survey of game operators.
0:29
And today, we're mostly going to talk about this column over on the left here. That's the scenario where there is a location involved that has some other business they are doing, and they have an operator come in and bring in coin-op games, and we hope pinball. so remember replay is a magazine for operators not just pinball people and so they're asking the operators what kinds of equipment do you put out on your locations sometimes called street locations and top of the list is pool tables and I can say from my days of operating back in the 70s that makes economic sense because it it costs less to buy there is some maintenance when you refelt it but it you know you learn how or whatever and and it's just going in a place where it's likely to stay there you know it's got to be a room that's got enough pre-covid yeah open space pre-COVID they stayed closed yeah and so that for decades has been like the standard of earnings in the sense of a steady game that you put it out it stays out and money comes in every week and the maintenance is very predictable now if you know anything about the history of coin up Probably the first thing you learn is that in the 80s, there was some upheaval where suddenly pinball went way down because video games just sort of displaced it. Video games have such low maintenance.
2:20
And for a time, they make spectacular money. and that rates slightly below pool in the operator survey even now where I guess now we'd be saying video games for street locations Big Buck Hunter and Silver Strike Bowling and Golden Key Golf evergreen titles at Renew and then we'll talk more about other like remade classics or whatever you have cranes. Cranes on location, you know, we just pluck the prize out of there.

medium confidence · Brian McCauley discussing Mitch's operational model and expansion

  • Brian McCauley manages or maintains approximately 34 locations; Dave Medour operates 62 locations across multiple categories (bowling alleys, bars, FECs)

    high confidence · Direct statements from operators during Q&A

    • Dave Medour@ 24:01 — Documents shifting power dynamics in operator-location relationships

  • “Node boards are becoming game-specific... Other companies are doing it too, but their circuit control board components are becoming game-specific.”

    Brian McCauley@ 19:53 — Identifies emerging servicing challenge across industry

  • “When I said this earlier today, everybody looked at me. We have locations that are asking us to do the reverse, do 30 us and 70 them. 30 for the operator and 70 for the business.”

    Dave Medour@ 24:10 — Reaction to unexpected market shift toward unfavorable operator splits

  • “With what I handle, we do different various routes. We have bowling alleys. We have bars. We have family entertainment centers... just to give you an idea, one company that I'm working for right now is expanding. We have three new locations opening in the next three months.”

    Brian McCauley@ 22:22 — Indicates healthy operator growth in New England market

  • “Everything's ROI, which is return on investment. I don't care who you are. If you're in business, those are three letters you always have.”

    Dave Medour@ 27:54 — Encapsulates operator business philosophy and decision-making framework

    • Chicago Gaming
    company
    Gottliebcompany
    Williamscompany
    Ballycompany
    Pizza Graham Westlocation
    Pinball Mapservice
    Insider Connectproduct
    Spikeproduct
    Ghostbustersgame
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
    Guardians of the Galaxygame
    Venomgame
    King Konggame
    Jurassic Park Environmental Shootergame
    Mata Harigame
    Kissgame

    high · Brian McCauley: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...could[n't] beat my Super Mario Brothers'; Guardians 'was the highest earning one...fun game...kids can get some shots, get multi-ball, figure it out'

  • $

    market_signal: Retro/classic pinball machines (1980s-1990s Gottlieb, Williams, Bally) maintain strong performance in location settings, particularly for nostalgia-driven players and tournament venues

    high · Brian McCauley reports mixed-era strategy successful; Dave Medour mentions retro games speed up tournaments compared to feature-heavy modern games; Super Mario Bros outperforms new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in children's location

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball adoption on location has risen from ~40% to 82% of operators in past 20 years, indicating strong market recovery and renewed operator confidence

    high · Replay Magazine August 2023 survey cited by host; corroborated by operator anecdotal evidence

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Brian McCauley manages ~34 locations as operator and service technician; notes critical shortage of skilled arcade/pinball technicians in market

    high · Brian McCauley states difficulty finding arcade techs; notes this drives location negotiation power and affects operator ability to service machines

  • $

    market_signal: Play pricing has stagnated relative to machine cost inflation; pinball at $1.00/play (vs. $0.50 in 1986) but machine prices jumped from $2,000 to $7,400+; operator revenue retention (50-60 cents per dollar) creates ROI pressure

    high · Dave Medour detailed historical pricing analysis; notes ROI challenge of $7,400+ machines requiring $1.00 play to justify economics

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Stern Spike 1 node boards (e.g., Node 8B, 8D4) becoming game-specific and unavailable in US market; forcing operators to idle machines or source internationally at high cost

    high · Brian McCauley describes two Ghostbusters machines unable to be serviced; Node 8D4 available only from Australia with $70 shipping; calls for Spike 3 to address component availability

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern Connect emerging as differentiated value-add for operators beyond revenue tracking; includes real-time switch diagnostics, remote power control, and location discovery via Insider-connected map

    high · Dave Medour extensively describes switch-level error alerts, tech reports before arrival, remote on/off capability; Michael Green highlights map integration for player discovery

    • 3:01
    And, slightly below that, 82% of operators say they run pinball. And I think 20 years ago, that was probably more like 40%. So I think we've had a really good resurgence out in locations, out on the street, that operators realize that pinball is good for them, plus retaining its value. Unlike some video games, they don't just go down to be worthless.
    3:34
    And below that, darts, ATMs, not really a game, let's hope. And below that, your basketball tosser games, air hockey, foosball, which was important when I was operating in the 70s around the seacoast area of New Hampshire, hot foosball area.
    3:59
    So it's good news that pinball is doing well. But Dave Medour, in your route, what do you think of the games that you say, I've got a new location. it's going to be small not a lot of games so I can't kind of cover my possibilities by having a lot of games I've got to pick something what's your probably core go-to game in a bar or something like that? First I'm going to look at the audience as to what they have one of the things you didn't mention in there that's a big staple in my business is actually the music the jukeboxes, the touch tunes well that's off the top of the scale I didn't even bother mentioning it that one's way up there But then, you know, I'd look at the space. Does a pool table even make sense? Yes, no. Cranes, you know, depending on, is it a family place? Is it a family-friendly pub? Or is this more a bar where it's going to be a 21 and up crowd and that's all you're going to see? That dictates whether a crane will kill it in locations where there's a lot of kids. A crane will do okay with an adult crowd. Pinballs are going to do a lot better. in crowds where there's going to be a good chunk of adults.
    5:19
    But then again, so will games like Buckhunter and Golden Sea. Yeah. So you see, here's a real-world perspective that pinball for us is like a very special kind of coin-op game, but when you're out there trying to make a living, you have to balance things off. And Brian McCauley, what are you seeing out there for the smaller type street locations? Small type street locations. Pinball, we see a lot of that. We focus on a lot of video games in our locations. Same thing like with Dave, Big Buck Hunter, we put into bars as well.
    5:59
    Okay. And any other, like, let's say a non-networked, like, plunk it down, stand-alone, upright video game that's a... We run everything from the 80s. We do Pac-Mans. We do the anniversary editions and stuff like that in the smaller locations. Again, right now there's a big demand. We see a big influx of people asking for pinball machines because they see it's growing and what have you. So that's one of the key things. Again, video games.
    6:27
    You know, you don't usually put a crane or anything like that in a buyer location. So it's... I've also seen a resurgence in a lot of people wanting specific classic games. They don't want a Pac-Man remake. They want a Pac-Man, or they want a Ms. Pac-Man. They want the legit one. Can you change out the CRT for a flat screen? Yes. Yeah, they don't have a problem with that, as long as it looks good. But, I mean, they really want the feel and the nostalgia of playing what they played when they were kids. Yeah. A lot of places are really pushing for that. I think that's what helps pinball, is because they remember playing pinball not necessarily like the Stern titles or the Jersey Jack titles that we have now, but they remember playing pinball as a game.
    7:14
    And I think it helps. I mean, then you have themes like what they're coming out with, where the license stuff is something that really pushes it along.
    7:26
    All right. So neither of you mentioned the more physical games like a toss or a rolling type of game? So we have a couple of our locations. We have Connect Four, which is a basketball game. It's a dual player. One of the things you've got to watch out in a bar environment is they are loud. So a lot of times the bar operators won't opt for something like that. So we're very cautious on doing that. We have one location where we have a connect floor. We also have a lodge, the ice basketball. And we do see that they do well in that environment. They do produce quite a bit of revenue.
    8:09
    Say you were focused on the small locations, and you're looking at some of these places, like small locations, like 10 feet for a ski ball is a lot of space.
    8:19
    10 feet, you can do a lot more width than you can with one ski ball. You put one skee-ball over three games.
    8:26
    Yeah. Chances are you're going to earn more with three pieces than you will with a single skee-ball. Right, and you as an operator first had to convince the location owner that the 10 feet or whatever is better with your games than a couple more tables of dining or drinking. So we just had that happen at one of the locations that we're opening. the owners asked us to come in and do an evaluation and we were talking about putting one of these brand new Connect 4s in. And one of the things was they had eight seats in the corner where this game would go and the two owners are going back and forth arguing about it and finally I had to talk to them and tell them you get eight seats, figure your turnover and what that money is going to make you per night whereas this video game or this basketball game that's going to be played from open to close because of where the location is, a steady stream of people. The other thing that was sort of a caveat with that is they weren't allowed to advertise at this location where this machine's 12 feet tall, it's neon, looks beautiful. You can see it from the outside, so it's basically free advertising for them. The two partners looked at each other like, it's case solved, get rid of the chairs, put the video game, put the Kinect 4 in. Yeah, that brings up another interesting thing. in more of a FEC or game room type situation, there's definitely a lot of tall pieces. So the airspace invaders is the big one. Yes. Where you're sitting back with the guns. And I happen to like Fishbowl Frenzy because it's a pin and ball game, right? You're dropping a ball and it's bouncing among some pins. And I think that's like eight feet tall without the toppers. Yes. But does that fit through a normal door? um it will fit through and no it will not so so that's advantage pinball right there is that it will fit through the door i have to be careful how i answer that because of if you want to spend the time to take it apart anything will fit through a door but you got to think you've got to reassemble that so a lot of times that when we're deciding at a location that's the key what can we fit through the door. A lot of these places are a 36 inch standard door. You've got to go with that and figure out what you can fit. Put it this way to expand on what he's saying. Jurassic Park Environmental Shooter. Pretty really good sized game, right? I put that through a 34 inch door opening.
    10:58
    In seven pieces. They do come apart. so we have a King Kong which is the new VR game that was released about a year, year and a half ago it is massive and we fit one through a 36 and it just disassembles into panels but again it's 12 hours to put it back together, it comes apart real easy but going back together it's a 12 hour process ok, so that's some perspective and we can take some questions later on if you want to get more into the game mix I will be returning to the topic of the game mix also, but quoting now from this August 2023 replay magazine, we also specifically asked what type of pinball machines operators had. About 48% said they have a mix of retro and new, while 30% had only newer, smaller group only retro, and then, of course, there's the 18% who, ah, pinball, no, no pinball. and I did have some contact with a mystery operator I will only call her Miss V and Miss V has been operating for a long time also somewhere in the New England region and no pinball not that she dislikes it but just the kind of bars she has you know they get stuck on one thing and I think she's more happy to have replaced a puck bowler with a physical puck by now is silver strike bowling and virtual type of bowling. But what do you see for retro pinballs?
    12:40
    So, you know, we, like Dave said earlier, we look at what the clientele coming in is going to be. If we're going into a small bar where we're going to have one or two pins, we want to have a playable pin. So we look more toward the Stearns, the Jersey Jack, or American, Chicago. if it's something where we're going to have a lot of pins we have one location that's got 9 pins in it and we mix and the majority of it are the Nostalgia older 80 pins and the 90 pins, we get a Mata Hari in this bar, we have a Kiss and a couple others, in the mix it does well, I mean people come in again, the Nostalgia, we used to play this when we were a kid and they really it really really works well doing the two eras I have two different locations that have more than a few pins. One of them is more focused around kids and I find that IP more than anything in that type of a place is what drives the sales So it doesn matter sometimes whether it new or old put it blankly I put a brand new Ninja Turtles in Thinking, oh my god, it's going to light the world on fire, great theme. It couldn't beat my Super Mario Brothers Gottlieb. But, the same thing happened the other way around when I put in Guardians of the Galaxy. Guardians of the Galaxy was the highest earning one there for quite some time. But again, it was a popular IP fun game. It also tends in that location, it has to be a little bit easier, and I think the biggest problem with Turtles is it is a little bit more of a difficult game for the little kids to follow. Whereas Guardians, they can pretty much shoot group, get multi-ball, and figure it out. at the other location they do league matches, they do tournaments and I find that place works best if there's some sort of a mix because if you get too many modern games with ball saves, with lots of multi-ball, with lots of features game times tend to run long with good players whereas some of the older games tend to speed up the tournament a little bit ok well that sort of pivots us over to there is a special class of location. And if we had Mitch Curtis here, we could talk in greater depth, but I think you guys can represent what Mitch does. So some locations are advertising as a great pinball destination that they hope all of you guys will find out about through pinballmap.com or whatever, and that people will come from tens of miles away because there are so many great pinball machines there. And we seem to be able to have quite a few of them in the New England area. We had mention of Pizza J earlier. Last night, we showed the movie Token Taverns that showed a lot of places in Florida that were all very close to each other that they seem to all be able to coexist and up and down the coastline and, you know, apart from the pay-by-the-hour places, but the coin drop type multi-pin locations. So each of you, Dave, you've already started to talk about your multi-pin locations. Brian, do you have a showcase of your best multi-pin? We have a location in Amesbury. We have nine pins in that location. They're a mix between Stearns and mostly Williams and Bally of 90 errors. It seems that we're talking the aspect of the coin drop location. Right. I meant in general that you pay per game as opposed to per hour, whether it's a real coin or a... Oh, we're using... In that location, we're using coin drop. Absolutely.
    16:40
    Okay, so you have some sense that people are coming in and maybe not going to come back, you know, like they're just passing through. Yes. Yeah, transient kind of audience.
    16:51
    Dave, anything further to say about your multi-pin location? Well, one of them's on a card reader system, one of them's on a coin system, and the benefit of the card reader system is you can see live data.
    17:03
    But that's the nice thing I've seen with Stern's system is I can see on a given day how many plays. I can also get tech reports before I even walk in there to know I'm about to walk into a problem. So you could theoretically monitor your pins on your swipe card or on your insider connection. You prefer insider connected. Insider actually on the professional route location side. so if you're a location you can actually get if you have a switch problem it'll actually pop up a tech alert will pop up on my phone I click on it, it'll tell me switch 57 error so I already can look in the book figure out which switch that is bring one with me, go to the location, fix it which is when you're on the road huge so the swipe card is only going to be talking the swipe card is only going to tell me how much money and when it went in. Well, the other thing too is we use the card system a little bit different at some of our locations. Some of our locations actually report to us. They can go in when they shut a machine down. They can go in and comment, and they'll tell us. A lot of it's more redemption. We do have a few redemption locations with pins. They can go in, and they can tell us, customer complained of the pop bumper is not working. So remotely again, I can go in, I can turn that machine on, I can turn it off remotely. I can turn around, see what's logged, and when I get there, go into the repair, go into the card system, shut it down. So it is a communication network like Stern Connect. Stern Connect just gives you more detail of specific what the issues are. With the card system, you're relying on somebody who you hope knows a little bit about what they're doing and what they type in. Okay. Seems like a good point to see if anyone wants to ask a question right now. I'm going to do a little pivot.
    19:03
    Okay, Derek here has a question. Check, check. Oh, it's working. Brian, we talked about this a little bit earlier.
    19:14
    What would you like to see from Stern Pinball in support of those Spike 1 games with their node boards, like node board number 8?
    19:24
    And maybe, I don't know, maybe it's question number 2, which is in relation to Spike 3 upcoming, maybe better support nodes. I'm not sure. So the conversation, Derek, and I, we were having was, so we have a couple. I also do pinball service in lieu of what I do for repairs in doing locations. And one of the things we're seeing is with Stern, it's not Stern specific. Other companies are doing it, but their node boards are becoming game specific. So just to give you an example, we have two Ghostbusters right now with the Node 8B board that's down. You cannot buy them in the United States right now. You cannot buy them. The only place we could find them is Australia by the time we landed at $70 in shipping plus the part.
    20:15
    So this is a concern as an operator or doing service in the field. We have these machines that we're putting out. Again, I don't want to say specific to Stern. It's a lot of vendors that are doing this. When you have a machine that's starting to age, that's two, three years old, we like to keep these older machines going because customers like older machines as well. We're finding that we've got to put these games idle because we just can't get those boards. So I'd like to see the Spike system somehow, whether it's a third party or what have you, generate more boards and replacement boards so we can keep these machines running. Like I said, we've got two gorgeous Ghostbusters. We can't get a Nodeboard 8D4. It really hampers putting machines on location.
    21:01
    So another one of those day-to-day concerns. Yes. And are your roots growing in general? First we'll talk in general, then we'll talk pinball. Yes.
    21:16
    We do different. With what I handle, we do different various routes. We have bowling alleys. We have bars. We have family entertainment centers. And, you know, we always meet with our owners, and they turn around and they keep asking, can we do more? Can we fit more? You know, there's pros and cons when you're going into a location. We have one location right now that has 30 machines, a mix of redemption, vending, pinball, and they're always asking, oh, we need more games. Easy for them to say, right? It is, because you're talking between $7,000 and depending on what the machine is. Right now, you can go up to $80,000 for one of the new VR machines. We just put a Superbike in, and it was $76,000 for them to install it. So when a company comes up to you or the owner comes up and says, oh, we want this, we want this, we've got to look at the foot traffic and what it does. So this location, we keep telling them, we can put 100 machines in your location. You don't have the foot traffic to support it. So that really makes it a challenge. But we try our best. We try to be what the opera is. But as for growing, yes. And, you know, I don't want to let too much out of the bag. But just to give you an idea, one company that I'm working for right now is expanding. We have three new locations opening in the next three months. And I'm talking locations that are 20 machines and greater, which we'll talk about, we'll announce later. So the industry is growing in New England, what we see. Yeah, I have a quote here. David Jackson, president of Action Jackson Amusements, you know, famous big operator.
    22:48
    Been in business around 50 years, 350 locations, 1,400 pieces out, and he says, I'm still growing. Yeah.
    22:58
    Dave, how about you? It's a business where you're always trying to grow, expand, find new ways. I mean, let's face it, some of the businesses that you're in, they go under, they go away. Okay. So you're constantly trying to find new ones coming in. New avenues for expansion, things people might not have thought of. But like you said, you've got to be careful. The hard part is you'll have places to say, I want 25 brand new games. Right, yeah. Well, when you want 25 brand new games and they're $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 a pop, but you only have 250 people in your location at a given time,
    23:38
    it's great that you want 25 pieces, but I don't see where that's going to help me any. So it's a big bill. One thing that I'm going to add on here because I know everybody's thinking, oh, you're an operator, you're taking all this money in. A lot of people lose sight of you're not taking all that money in. It's divided up here. It's divided up. And we were talking, Dave and I have very good communications in our two different businesses. We have locations that there are 30-70, which is 70% the operator, 30% the business. It is starting to change. And when I said this earlier today, everybody looked at me. We have locations that are asking us to do the reverse, do 30 us and 70 them. 30 for the operator. 30 for the operator and 70 for, and the reason being is the businesses are getting cocky. They're seeing the 50-50 or the 60-40 split and thinking, oh, I can do this myself.
    24:31
    Well, they seem to forget a couple things. They don't have to invest $100,000 right off the bat for their location. They don't have to find a tech. I don't know any of you who have looked for a tech. It's hard to find an arcade tech right now. So you bring this all up and you get the deer in the headlights, they are all. Okay, we can't give you the 30-70 split, but that's what they're asking right now, some locations.
    24:58
    Again, because it's easy to say. I haven't played that too much so far. We should give the locations. Dave is more from southern mid-Maine up north, and where I'm more based, southern Maine down to Boston is what I cover. So it's a little bit of a different market, but again, where the market's hot, like a Boston market, the owners are seeing this and they're like, well, why do I have to give you this? And you always have to come up and tell them, well, this is why you're paying me or doing this. Well, what about rotation for that matter? If it's a pinball-centric place and they want to have 10 pinball machines, so there's going to be some older ones, wouldn't they want to see a variety of not just the newest ones coming in when they can, but also some older ones that are different older ones? Well, this is where the other catch is. You always have to have an arsenal of machines. So one of the companies that I work for, we have a good-sized shop. We always have six pinball machines that are ready to go in rotation. But throughout the course of a month, we are always rotating our pinball machines around because you've got to have a fresh variety. People come in. We have one location in the center of Boston. There are six machines. And the players come and tell us, hey, Jurassic Park's been here. It's growing dust. And we have to rotate them out and get something fresh in there. I'm a sport of new machines, again, because the cost of pinball machines, just like everything else, they're rising. A location says, oh, can we get the latest, greatest? we got a Venom coming and we can't wait. We're dying for our Venom to come in. And that's what these locations are demanding of the newer machines. But the hard part that really hasn't changed, especially in pinball,
    26:40
    you know, 86 pinball, what did you pay, 50 cents? Per play. Okay. So in the 90s, what did you pay for an Adams family? Eight. Okay.
    26:55
    what in that span of time didn't increase besides pinball? Besides arcade games? Everything else went up Okay so let fast forward in like 2000s They finally get to what 75 Now you finally up to a buck in you know 2020 2019 2018 we at a dollar Or with a card swipe And people are sitting there going, I don't can't believe you've got to pay a dollar to play a pinball machine. And I'm like, okay, but when you take that dollar, you split it out, we're not getting but like 50, 60 cents of that dollar.
    27:31
    Pinball machines, you know, when you're selling them for 50 cents a play, you were talking a $2,000 machine.
    27:40
    Now you're trying to get a dollar a play on, what's pro now, $7,400? So when you're looking at an amusement company, an operator, everything's ROI, which is return on investment. I don't care who you are. If you're in business, those are three letters you always have. And if you take what you get. We will cycle back to that for sure. We have a question over here.
    28:09
    Possible ringer in the audience, but let him ask his question. Hello, everyone. Michael Green here, Senior Manager of Location Entertainment for Stern Pinball. I just want to add some color to what these gentlemen are saying. When you hear some objections from locations about revenue split, I just add some color to that. From Stern Pinball's point of view, we work with professional operators on a day-to-day basis and work with them to help improve their route and in their relationship with locations. We're currently encouraging pinball operators 80-20 split, 70-30 split, something like that, in favor of the operator. And what you're doing by bringing pinball into other games is you're enhancing the entertainment experience, for one.
    28:57
    If you're using Stern pinball games and you have them insider connected, You also have insider-connected map, which is also drawing players to the location. And something called utility, where you're in seats in the stools.
    29:11
    You're getting people in the place to play pinball, but they stay for the food and the drink. And if you're organizing tournaments once a month and beyond, stuff like that, you can strategically schedule them on slower nights and increase those incremental food and beverage sales. So and also the social media aspect to it you can separate yourself from the competition and use you know something you see like breweries and cider caves they'll announce a new beer or a new product or a new breakfast item and they've got the pinball of the other games in the background and it's just it's almost subconscious like wow this place looks hip I should really check it out. So it's not just about coin drop you're really you you're you're really helping. Okay, let's run with that because that's the next thing I wanted to get to.
    30:07
    And it would have helped if Mitch were here, but I think we'll fill in for him. So you say there's an operator that's dominantly pinball, but if he's taking it upon himself to be the showrunner or something like he's not just putting the games there and coming back every week to collect the money. He's actually saying, I'm going to push for the league to be here. And so in the survey of the operators there, they're talking about that, not just for pinball, of course, pool, whatever bowling type machine, darts. Darts were like nothing when I was an operator until someone said, we're going to do dart leagues. and then darts were something. Foosball, you know, leagues help a lot there too.
    31:03
    So that must be part of Mitch's magic formula, I guess. Yes. So it's just like anything else when you're on a location. I used to manage a bar years and years ago, and I used to bring an operator who supplied me with a, we had two pinball machines and a video game. and it did good, just like a dot league. We used to have just a small tournament like on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, and it's bringing customers into your bar. You advertise it a little bit, and, you know, usually people come in, you'll bring in 8 to 12 people, and it is a resume stream, so I don't want to, you know, say it's not.
    31:43
    One of the things that we see is a lot of times, and Mike, Michael's comment was part of like Insider Connect. We know because we're in the business, you have to sell that. I think Insider Connect is fantastic. I love everything it does. It does advertise for the operation, but you have to sell that. A lot of these people who are owners, they don't care. All they want to see is this is the coin drop. What are you giving me for a check at the end of the month? That's all they're interested in. So in Mitch's case, there's a difference. So Dave operates, I repair. I don't have locations that I operate. I do repairs for other operators.
    32:24
    It's hard, and I do a lot of their estimating. I do a lot of their, I go in and I do consulting for them. So it's hard when you see, you know, the customer will ask,
    32:36
    what are you going to do for me? So where I was going with this, Mitch turns around, he has a unique niche with his machines. He goes in, he maintains, I mean, Mitch is at his locations once or twice, I should say every other day, he's waxing, washing, he's doing maintenance. And Mitch has four locations right now? I guess that's what we're tossing around, but I don't know correctly. He's got another one, unfortunately he's not here to announce it, but he's got another one that's coming up.
    33:08
    He's able to maintain and do this passionate love he has for pinball. It's high when you're like Dave, an operator, or myself. Dave, how many locations do you run right now? 62. Okay. So with my business, a lot less than you. I'm actually about 34 that I manage or I maintain. So for me to go to a location, I do hit all my locations once a week. My son, Joshua, who's in the audience, he cleans, he does what have you.
    33:37
    We go on like pin map and we watch things. You know, you'll always have the individual say, oh, well, I went to, let's say, I'm going to use a fake name, Stern Village. The machine was a mess, what have you. As an operator, it's hard for you to get in, you know, often twice, more than once a week where Mitch is there. So that just shows you more of a dedicated pin operator. We go in once a week to all our locations that have pins. They're cleaned. They're adobased. They're waxed. They're maintained. but again you can see where you have a dedicated person who specializes in pin the quality and I hate to say it this way but it is it's life the quality is better with someone and some of you may be thinking of doing something like this we'll try to address that possibility in a minute Dave do you have any comments along those lines like I don't think you have time to be the ambassador of pinball and run the leagues yourself or anything. So you're just... I was going to say, that's usually my headache. I know I could make more with pinball. Absolutely could. If I could push leagues. Have the social media presence and do all that. But trying to run and keep up with 62 locations. Make sure every piece of equipment runs in every one of them. And we're talking things from redemption arcades.
    34:58
    We're talking jukeboxes. We're talking pool tables. Video games. And we're talking two and a half hours drive from my house in either direction.
    35:08
    Put it this way, I got a truck in June. From June until now, I've put 9,500 miles on that truck. All in service work, because it's the only thing it works for. Okay, so, but you would be willing to cooperate with leagues? Oh, absolutely. A pinball activist? What I would really benefit from is one person that literally just wants to be the social media go-to, the hype person, you know? Hypes up the location, pushes the product, brings value to whichever location it is. I would absolutely benefit from that. And I think that I can get locations to do a little bit of that, but I'm going to have to give up some percentage because they're not going to give me 80% if I'm not bringing in the money if they're doing the work. Yeah, and it certainly seems more feasible for the operator to try and either be the pinball activist or find the pinball activist. I mean, some people probably open a bar thinking, I'm going to have a great pinball location. Then they go to one of you guys and they say, you want me to spend $250,000 filling up your room with pinball and you have no idea whether it's going to work or not? So one thing that when I go into a location, our Boston location is a good example. We rely on New England Pinball a lot. We ask them because they're the league or what have you. We send people, you know, like Nicole Burney and a couple others, we ask them to go in and basically, you know, talk to the bar owners or the managers. Usually you don't have an owner on location. Usually it's a GM or a manager. And we ask them to go in, you know, this bar is a good league bar. Can you go in and talk to them? Once the owners find out that they're not responsible for being their league night or the GM, and it can basically run itself through a New England pinball or a league organization, usually the locations will jump right on it. They usually will allow, they have a good time and they invite it. Yeah, well, that's one of the things that puzzles me because, and we saw it in the movie last night, Token Taverns. a person's opening a bar, they want to have an entertainment spot. They want to pick the right bartenders and serve the cool beers that people really want to try. And so why wouldn't they also be that enthusiastic about whatever kind of coin-op games they have, be they pinball or whatever? what they I'm throwing it they're going to be they're going to want the top end stuff they're going to want the nice stuff, the new stuff but it's like you said, it's got to be feasible and work on the spot yeah, but couldn't you say in a contract negotiation if you had a contract for your location, couldn't you say not only are we expecting you location to provide us with electricity and some square footage, which has been the traditional, but we also want you to do this, this, and this on social media where you mention pinball, and we want you to do this and this, and every print ad you ever run has to say that there's games in there. You know, put that in the contract. What are the issues that you're having, especially in the bar and restaurant industry? You can't really push it on them. Right. They are so short staff that asking a bartender to do social media stuff when they're you know they probably should have five and they get three and they can't keep up with the drink sales one of the managers aren't going to be on board with that one of the companies that i work for um is a large company um it's big night entertainment they're out of boston and you know you go in and you try to sell them on it they don't want anything to do with it this if you want to do a league in one of our locations it's on your own you bring so as an operator and as somebody who services many locations, it's real hard. I don't have the time to sit and run a league on a Tuesday night, so you've got to rely on the leagues that are already out there and ask them to come in. Hey, this is, again, like I said earlier, this is a great bar. They get eight pinball machines. They want to do a league. And usually most of these leagues come in with open arms. They want to support. They want locations. And they will come out and run the league for the location. It's just you've got to have that connection. You've got to be the one that builds that bridge. Again, and I hate to sound so black and white, owners don't want to invest the time to do this, so they try to put it off on you. And when you suggest it, you have to own it. If you don't own it, it's not going to happen.
    39:54
    Do you have another question here? I have two quick questions. One is just a really quick question. Do you guys have contracts, especially in bars, if there is damage to the machine that's outside of standard maintenance? that they pay for it. Sounds like a game owner who was thinking about putting your game on location. Well, I did, and somebody hit the back glass. Okay, so damage to the games on location. Damage to games on location.
    40:23
    So the companies that I work for carry insurance on all their games. They also, the actual locations carry insurance also. The problem is, just like any other insurance, you're going to have what we call casual damage. Connect Four is a good example. We have a Connect Four in Boston. Somebody got overzealous, took a skee ball and did the loft into the 60 plasma screen Unfortunately it doesn meet the deductible that on the operator and the operator that I worked for to replace that he ended up eating that TV same thing with back glasses we had a wave a real weird wave in Boston where they were popping flipper buttons out of pinball machines or taking a key and popping the actual button out that's stuff we you just that's not something you can go to your insurance company that's a constant. It's sort of like a wash. It's something that we take and we work with. Another thing that will happen, and I've seen it with just about every game, is any place you have kids or whatever else, expect that you're going to see sometimes they're going to carve into the side of games or somebody's going to get their hands on a nice black permanent marker and write on the side of your game.
    41:39
    That type of stuff's going to happen. And you guys just eat all of that stuff? Yep, pretty much. It's one of the reasons we have to put the percentage in a favor that's in our favor because damages, maintenance, and repairs come out of our budget. You know, I'm going to give another push to Mitch. It's a passion of love. Like having a pinball bar like Mitch supports. It really is because you don't factor in a vehicle cost, your time, insurance, the losses, general maintenance. anything you do, that's on that person who owns those machines so that's, I mean, it's a labor of love so how does that scale down to someone like Gabe who's got maybe three or four games to spare, like he doesn't want to put out tens of games, maybe just a handful so he's got less liability in the sense of how much damage could occur with just those few games but is the numbers just not working out when you have that few?
    42:43
    I think on a location when it comes to pin, again, you get a factor in your loss, your maintenance and all that. So, you know, a lot of people come to me, oh, the money must be great. If you look at it, it isn't. I mean, a lot of times it's a negative, it's a loss, it's a write-off on a pinball. And I'm talking pinball because, you know, I'm going to go back to what David said about what you're charging for pinball. Right now, the average price is a dollar a play. We have locations that push $1.50. We had one location down south in Foxborough where we were in a very prominent area. We were able to bring pinball up to $2 a play for three balls. The operator who owned the location asked me, hey, you know, I'm going to go up to $2.50. I was like, you're crazy. I said, $2.50. So he went. At $2, it was very successful. It was a coin drop, and it was always the coin box every week was full. When he went to $2.50, it stopped. I mean, the breaks were applied in the coin box. So we know regular locations, 75 cents to a dollar,
    43:48
    real good elaborate locations, you could push $2, and it's a one-time deal. You're not going to have people who play pinball on a regular basis. It's a, I'm here on vacation, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to drop the coin, and that's it. It's going to be one game. So it's really hard to say, oh, you're going to make a lot of money. you get a factor in what we said earlier, the insurance, splits, and what have you. So you're not going to make a ton of money. I'll tell you from somebody that did exactly that, that's what I've done, that's what I've done. We don't make the insurance money every month yet, but this is only our third month. Oh. So there is no split to make yet. Because in our contract, we do actually have to pay the insurance and the registration costs, and then the split.
    44:33
    So we will get to that split, but not yet. cross my fingers. On the play pricing, if you had the swipe cards, then you can do things like $1.37 or, you know, Dave and Buster's trick of you get each game costs 50 points, but how many pennies per point? And you just can't do all the math. That's a real high. We use, and Dave does as well, so we use a lot of card systems in our locations.
    45:01
    One of the things that we find is some locations use 10 cents as a marker. Some use a quarter. So one location that I service, you go up and it's three credits and everybody's like, oh, your price is real cheap. Well, no, because each credit is a quarter. Another location that I work at turns around and they charge seven cents and people are like, oh my god, that's so much. It's 70 cents because they're based on a 10 cent per credit. So there's a lot of back and forth. Right, and tomorrow we'll be talking a little bit with the Glimmerhold people. They're going with a high-priced token, is their plan. And Glimmerhold, you can see, get some information about what they're doing. They have a special room down the West Wing.
    45:50
    So they're going to do token operation because of the nostalgia factor. They like the tokens they think will contribute to the nostalgia, rather than cards, and it's going to be high-priced. So one thing, I'm going to go into the token versus tickets versus Okay, quickly. Real quickly. So we get called to an arcade to just do a quick consult, and they ask us, oh, you know, on the card swipe system, what are the reasons we should go? We love seeing the kids with the tickets and the tokens, and the first comment out of my mouth and the person I was with was like, we could tell you $13,000 worth of reasons why you want to switch. I'm like, well, what do you mean? So doing an evaluation, they were spending $13,000 on tickets and tokens a year. not a year, a season, six month period. The card system, once you get off, you eliminate all that, the tokens, buying the tickets, having labor to empty ticket eaters, stocking machines, clearing jams, what have you. So this card reader, these card reader systems, really, really benefit and really reduce costs when you're operating machines. Yeah, Apex across the street has swipe cards. Oh, imagine this. I mean, a redemption arcade when we grew up, You had to have what? One, two people at the prize counter, somebody walking the floor to handle coin jams and filling tickets, right? I have a redemption arcade at a very busy resort. Do you know how many people work at that resort?
    47:16
    Correct. I have nobody at that resort. I have a card system and an automated redemption machine that reports back to me. I go by once a day, fill the machine, take care of the card system.
    47:29
    Okay. Just a quick thing. Real quick. You just noticed what he said. He goes to that location once a day. Once a day. So he's seven days a week working one location where he has to drive out for 12 weeks. So that's why we were talking about the pinball factor and being able to maintain and do, well, it's Tuesday, why is my machine dirty? Well, because we service it once a week on a Wednesday because of the time factor.
    47:58
    Okay. I was just wondering, either counting money, do you guys just have your machines to count money, and have you guys ever used pay range? Pay range? That's more of a UK thing, I thought.
    48:13
    I'm old school. I count it by hand. Quick coin. Quick coin? Yeah, put it in a hopper, quarters, change, it goes into what they call a quick coin counter. It goes through, it puts it in Staxboy and what have you. And most of it's by hand. I got one of those big old clop counters that counts and rolls it. Yeah, clop's another one. Old-fashioned. How about the dollar bills? Dollar bills, they have what we call a dollar sorter. We put it on, it counts. We always double-check the money because they do have a tendency to spit bills out and miscount. But most of it's done by hand.
    48:48
    Okay, last call for questions. I'm going to take one more quote. So, in the survey from the trade magazine, they asked operators about the future. So the operators generally were summarized to be looking for yet more money in jukebox revenue, successful dart leagues, new locations, which we certainly talked about, new employees, if you can get them, and growing pinball interest. So this year in the operator survey that was something that bubbled up and and I think that's very refreshing. I think it's been a long time since the operators have, and Michael you're probably seeing that same thing.
    49:50
    There are incentives to join. It's a six-month free trial to join the AMLA, which gives you the opportunity to have representation in your state and federal government, learn what's new and hot, what all the trends are, and have that information in the next lottery with other fellow professional operators. So we're encouraging all enthusiast operators, folks like Mitch and Dave, who started as a football enthusiast into a collector. Yeah, and if you're not quite sure about when you want to start your six-month trial of AMOA, first thing you can do is subscribe to replay and get that for a while and kind of see where pinball seems to be getting its certain quota of exposure and attention from operators, but there's several other game types. So if you're a pinball enthusiast, you do have to think about, am I someday going to cross that line and change the mix? And the other thing is, if you get involved with AMOA, they have a show every year as well. I believe this coming year is going to be March. I'm not sure on the dates right off the top of my head, but I know it's in Las Vegas again.
    51:17
    And, well, everybody likes to play the brand new pinball machines. How would you like to go play Venom and not have to wait behind anybody else? Yeah. And it's like the week before TPF. I got to play I don't know how many pinball games there because everybody there is looking at everything, and they're not full of pinball enthusiasts. so you could play half a dozen games back to back to back to back without moving pretty easily. But the other thing is you're going to meet with all of the other types of industries that you're going to want to be involved. I mean, let's face it. How many businesses right now are starting to not take cash at all?
    51:56
    It's happening. It is happening. So if you're thinking of operating, you're going to want to pay attention to options that allow you to take credit cards,
    52:04
    Apple Pay, Google Pay. any other methods you're going to want to be able to do it doesn't mean you have to push all your business there because you want to make them cash and try to get as much cash as you can if you take it off the table that's twenty percent or thirty percent of your revenue that before that customer even spent a dime walked out the door you know if a person walks into your arcade and they have twenty dollars in their pocket they put it in a token machine and get twenty dollars worth of tokens But what if they have a deal and you can get $50, you spend $50 and get like $80 worth of tokens.
    52:42
    And you take credit cards. But they still only have that $20 in their wallet. They might take that deal, put $50 in, get the extra tokens, play longer, spend more money with you. But it was because they had the card.
    52:58
    Okay. Well, I think we've got a good example here of camaraderie among operators and cooperation. So, you know, it's not all as cutthroat as some movies might portray it.
    53:16
    Not anymore. It has changed over the past decade. Not for the most part. We tend to get along for the most part. Yeah, well, you have to.
    53:25
    All right. We could do this again in future years and talk more about the arcade side, but I think I wanted to start out with talking about operating on locations that have other businesses and you're just an ancillary part of it because I think that's where people enter. That's where I entered.
    53:44
    I started out with one used pinball machine and one new foosball machine that was under $1,000 back then and just sort of worked my way up from part-time to not quite so part-time.
    54:02
    So that's a dream that a lot of people have, especially if they already own the machines. I started with two. Yeah, now you have more of an orientation to what your next few steps would be if you were going to try to be one of that type of operator. So thanks, everybody, for coming.
    54:22
    Hope you liked it.