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IAAPA UPDATE

Pintastic New England·video·40m 30s·analyzed·Dec 3, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

IAAPA trade show report: pinball growing, all machines sold, VR trends, payment systems evolution discussed.

Summary

Pintastic New England hosts a discussion with attendees of IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions), a massive industry trade show in Orlando. The panel covers pinball's growing presence at the show (3 manufacturers vs. 1 seven years ago), strong machine sales across all brands, emerging VR technology trends in amusement rides, payment system evolution for location-based gaming, and historical context on pinball operator economics and ROI models.

Key Claims

  • Pinball manufacturer presence at IAAPA has grown from 1 to 3 manufacturers in the last 7 years

    high confidence · Host speaker, personal attendance history at IAAPA

  • Every pinball machine on the IAAPA show floor was sold

    high confidence · Brian McCauley, Pintastic representative at show; corroborated by multiple panelists

  • Stern had approximately 10-11 machines at IAAPA, all sold

    high confidence · Brian McCauley, direct observation at show

  • Butch Peel indicated his company has a waiting list with manufacturing fully committed

    medium confidence · Brian McCauley paraphrasing conversation at show

  • American Pinball displayed 10 machines at IAAPA: 4 Legends of Valhalla, 4 Hot Wheels, 2 Houdinis

    high confidence · American Pinball exhibitor, booth photos shown

  • Oktoberfest machines are currently in shipping containers in the Pacific Ocean due to supply chain issues

    medium confidence · American Pinball representative, vague reference to container shipping delays

  • A smaller company is releasing a new Ice Cold Beer arcade machine with new servo motors, new code, and custom-designed joysticks

    medium confidence · Dave (former ICE employee) describing machine seen at show; no manufacturer name provided

  • VR technology is dominating the IAAPA show floor with applications expanding beyond traditional VR arcades to hydraulic rides and walkthrough experiences

    high confidence · Multiple panelists describing show observations

  • Credit card reader units cost approximately $900 installed (including dollar bill acceptor and card head)

    high confidence · Operator panelist with hands-on experience with Intercard systems

  • One high-volume arcade location achieved ROI on a $28,000 card reader system installation within one year

Notable Quotes

  • “Pinball is this tiny little corner of the side of the eighth grouping of booths. It's tiny, but growing.”

    Host (Pintastic New England)@ 0:53 — Characterizes pinball's position within broader amusement industry despite growth

  • “Every machine on the floor was sold.”

    Brian McCauley@ 6:51 — Key indicator of strong market demand across all manufacturers at IAAPA

  • “The manufacturing that they're doing, he says anything they get is sold, which was amazing.”

    Brian McCauley (paraphrasing Butch Peel)@ 7:20 — Evidence of production constraint and high demand

  • “You don't want to have to go and download an app just to play a game of pinball.”

    Steven Martin@ 18:58 — Critique of current location payment friction and user experience

  • “We have got to have a really easy way for people to buy games, and that's going to have to lead, I think, to actually doing a vending machine type payment system.”

    Steven Martin @ Payment systems discussion — Proposed solution for frictionless payment mimicking vending machine UX

  • “One year return on investment is just unheard of.”

    Operator panelist@ 29:38 — Demonstrates strong profitability metrics for modern card reader installations

  • “VR is taking over everything.”

    Brian McCauley@ 9:24 — Broad assessment of dominant technology trend at show

Entities

Pintastic New EnglandorganizationIAAPAeventAmerican PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyBrian McCauleypersonSteven MartinpersonSteven BowdenpersonMitesh PefapersonCaseyperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Modern pinball secondary market economics fundamentally different from 1960s-80s: machines retain 50%+ value after 2 years, enabling operator reinvestment vs. machine destruction

    high · Multiple panelists discussed modern resale economics vs. historical practice of destroying machines to prevent competitor access

  • ?

    business_signal: Manufacturer waiting lists and fully committed production indicates supply constraint and sustained high demand

    medium · Brian McCauley reported Butch Peel stated manufacturing is fully committed with waiting list

  • ?

    event_signal: IAAPA attendance by multiple pinball manufacturers and strong community engagement with plans for post-show venue visits

    high · Vendors told panelists they would have representatives at Pintastic venue on specific days post-IAAPA

  • $

    market_signal: High-volume arcade locations seeing strong standing-room-only pinball play; modern payment systems enabling rapid ROI (1 year on $28k investment)

    medium · Operator panelist described standing-room-only pinball play and exceptional ROI metrics at multiple locations

  • $

    market_signal: All pinball machines on IAAPA show floor were sold, indicating strong demand across Stern, American Pinball, and other manufacturers

    high · Multiple panelists confirmed every machine sold; Brian reported manufacturers breaking down booths early to send staff to future events

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.121

0:00
So this has been a weird year for Pentastic in part because we have the IAFA trade show that ran earlier this week. and we have two people and maybe we'll get Brian the third person one of our own Dan's getting a little bonus some art blades so IAPA is so big It's for the whole amusement industry. It's like pinball is this tiny little corner of the side of the eighth grouping of booths. It's tiny, but growing. It's growing big.
1:06
Let me just put it this way. The last time I was at my very first IEPA trade show that I was at, seven years ago, and there was one manufacturer. This time there's three manufacturers. So it has grown just in pinball. I mean, the whole, it's like the biggest candy land, Willy Wonka land that you could possibly imagine for a trade show. Martin, was this your first time? I have to say, yes. I've never been to IAPA. Normally it takes place at the same time of year, in November, and I always come over to the U.S. for Pinball Expo in October. And people are saying, oh, after Expo, are you going to IAPA? and I go, well, it's kind of like another two or three weeks' time and I can't really spend this amount of time in the country. I have a job and a life back in the UK where I come from. So I've never been able to get there. But this year, because I wasn't allowed to come to the US until the 8th of November due to not being allowed to fly in, I was in on the 10th and a few days later I was in IAFA. so yes I have no references to what it used to be like but I do have reference to how it compares to other trade shows around both the US and Europe and yes there's no doubt it's absolutely massive and make sure you have good shoes yeah I did fine I try and do it all in one day and it's quite a lot of walking if you've got one of these things that tracks your number of steps you'll hit your goal before you're even half way around so make sure you have comfortable shoes Monday morning it's funny I had the team come in I came in on Sunday night just a sec here we should in the interest of full disclosure he's an exhibitor American Pinball for those who didn't catch that but we came in on Sunday night I started setting up the team flew in I had already put on 30,000 steps by about 10 o'clock at night and then the team was exhausted and they went to bed. They're all younger than me so I'm happy to say that I could outlast them. Then he calls me up and says, you want to go out for drinks? We put another 10,000 steps on because he didn't want to go to the bar near us. We had to walk all the way down the strip and we had a couple drinks and caught up.

medium confidence · Operator panelist describing personal location performance; specific location not named

  • “After two years a machine title you buy for a hundred bucks now you can buy a title for like three or four thousand dollars, you've already made your money plus your money back to reinvest”

    Host (discussing historical vs. modern economics)@ 31:14 — Illustrates how secondary market resale economics have transformed pinball business model

  • “If you go into the games room there is here, all the machines take either quarters or dollar bills. If you go into the vending machines, they all take credit cards.”

    Steven Martin@ 19:52 — Points out broader industry trend of cashless payment adoption affecting pinball adoption

  • “Maybe you have a pinball machine on a hydraulic base and you put your VR helmet on and you play it.”

    Steven Martin@ 13:14 — Speculative but creative idea for future VR-pinball convergence

    • Dave
    person
    Butch Peelperson
    Raw Thrillscompany
    DOF Roboticscompany
    Legends of Valhallagame
    Hot Wheelsgame
    Houdini Master of Mysterygame
    Oktoberfestgame
    Ice Cold Beergame
    Intercardcompany
    Dave & Buster'sorganization
    Pinball Expoevent
    Harry Williamsperson
    ICEcompany
    $

    market_signal: Credit card reader hardware costs (~$900) creating barrier to adoption; operators questioning ROI despite strong financial performance at high-volume locations

    high · Detailed cost breakdown provided; operator noted old operators 'cringe' at $28k total system cost despite proven ROI

  • ?

    product_strategy: American Pinball Oktoberfest machines in shipping containers (likely Pacific route) indicating supply chain delays

    medium · American Pinball rep stated Oktoberfest is 'in containers floating in the Pacific Ocean' as explanation for unavailability at IAAPA

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ice Cold Beer arcade revival incorporating modern servo motors, custom-designed joysticks, and new code enabling game variation

    medium · Dave described seeing the machine and lengthy conversation with engineer about joystick redesign and servo implementation

  • ?

    technology_signal: Current location-based payment systems (card swipe, proprietary apps) creating friction for casual impulse play; industry moving toward contactless payment standards

    high · Steven Martin detailed friction points at Dave & Buster's; panelists discussed need for vending machine-style UX; operator implementing contactless Intercard systems

  • ?

    technology_signal: VR technology expanding into amusement rides with hydraulic motion integration, moving beyond traditional seated arcade experiences

    high · Extensive IAAPA documentation of DOF Robotics, Raw Thrills King Kong ride, and monster truck VR experiences with multiple panelists confirming dominance

    • 3:29
    I've been to Orlando many times but not in the last five, six years. and the place I wanted to go to turned out not to be there anymore so we found somewhere else and just had a quiet nightcap and yeah it was a nice evening and I hadn't realized how busy he'd been during the day but it was the first day of the trade show being open so I know it's always going to be busy How much does it dominate the whole city of Orlando? Like every place in the city knows IAPA's in town? Oh yeah, everybody knows it's IAPA there's little I mean you see people walking around with IEPA lanyards and everybody you know you go into a restaurant no matter what restaurant you're gonna find them all so it's an amazing show and it's just it's just on tasking and you know I don't know how to put it I do have some slides and we show a picture yeah so just joining us Brian McCauley is Pintastic's very own representative down at the IAAPA show through his day job. He brought me back this show book, this 248 page book. You remember the last time Fantastic did a book we had 32 pages. This is all small print too, all the different thousands of exhibitors. There's a shot from IAAPA. That's the American pinball booth. We had 10 machines. And that's Steve Bowden, our new salesman for American Pinball.
    5:04
    What else we got? So you can see our booth. You're learning all these rigs here. So we have the FCI Epo booth. There's our team. We had constant people at the booth the whole show. Yeah, he had a very nice display. He had 10 machines there. There were 4 Legends of Valhalla, 4 Hot Wheels, and 2 Houdinis. That's correct. Now, for everybody who has asked me we are going to continue to make Oktoberfest. Everybody's asking me, where is Oktoberfest? I will tell you, you can watch. A lot of people love that game. You can actually watch the morning news every morning, and you will see Oktoberfest. It is in those containers floating in the Pacific Ocean. That's the biggest problem I have right now is that American had a few issues, but I don't want to get into that. We'll keep that for the next four o'clock. But I think, do we have another slide? Yep, there's another shot of the booth. Just go back one, just show you how massive this is. So you can see Rothrills, you know, Stearns behind me. There's a bunch of other little guys. But, Brian, how big is this one? You know, I tried to judge and get a picture from overhead. It is minimum the size of a football field. According to what they tell me, it's a mile long and a mile wide. Yeah, it's stunning when you walk in. This is my first time to the show. They have rides that are usually outside for amusements that are set up in this place, and they're operating. They have kids and people riding on these rides. It was just fascinating. I went through for Pintastic. I was talking to the pinball representatives there, and when I was talking with them, one thing that fascinated me was talking about what they're looking at. every machine on the floor was sold. Yes. Which was amazing. I mean, Stern, what did Stern have? They had probably 10 machines, 11 machines. Everything sold. I went over to Houdini and that same thing. They were, everything sold. Correct. So I got a take out of it. The pinball is really, really popular right now. And I was talking to Butch Peel, and he said his machines, he says he's got a waiting list. the manufacturing that they're doing. He says anything they get is sold, which was amazing. We have a waiting list in America.
    7:29
    It's at the right time, and I'm going to tell you, after IAEPA we had a ton of people from all around the world. And that's the other thing about IAEPA. You have people. We have people from France. We have people from Italy. We have people from South America, Australia. I mean, they were coming in from all over the world, and they're just like, we want machines. And that was the biggest cry. So we were happy to hear that. Now, this is the show that's, the short name is the Parks Show. Correct. Well, the one thing I want to point out is, Brian, I don't know if you know this, after you go on the inside, go outside, the back parking lot is full of rides and brand-new bounce houses, things they couldn't get in the building kind of thing. It's just kind of crazy how big it is. Do we have one more slide?
    8:15
    That's us setting it up. That's American Spoo set up. and there's the team. So there's me, Mitesh Pefa, who is my electrical wiring engineer. And then we got Steve Bowden, who is our new sales manager. And we have Casey, who is our up-and-coming R&D guy. So these guys all had done some really good work, so we took them to the show and they knocked it out of the park. In fact, I think Mitesh and Casey are still breaking down the booth. So they told me they would contact me a little bit later on this morning.
    8:55
    I found it very amazing because, again, when I was working and talking with the vendors who were there, Stern and the pinball companies, they were all turning around. They were breaking down their machines or sending people to our show and what have you. So I talked to a bunch of people, and they were like, oh, yeah, we've got people going down to Pintastic Thursday, Pintastic Friday. And it was just breathtaking seeing the processes that are going on with this.
    9:20
    Popularity, Dave asked me to look and see what was popular down there. VR is taking over everything. Which was the pre-show hype that VR was going to be really big. Yeah, VR was amazing. We watched this ride. The company is called DOF Robotics. So I'm sitting there in this big gear. If you look at it, it looks so plain. It's a bench and it's got these harnesses. You look at it and you're like, what do you get all these harness for? So everybody on the ride's smiling, they got their VR on, and this thing's on a plane that's going back and forth. All of a sudden you hear a little beep and this device flips upside down. These people are hanging upside down Well the big smiles went to the oh my God you know first ride of the day It was just amazing There was one ride it wasn a ride it was a walkthrough And it's a big house, it's probably a quarter of the size of this room. And what they do is, you walk in and it's animated all around you. It's not a VR to ride, but they call it VR wall. And when you walk in, they have it, it's a water type experience. And it missed you and stuff like that. there's wind but they also have it where the floor outside fills with water and it's just an amazing ride it gives so much realistic to what you're doing but everything that was really the lines were vr related on the just the entire show yeah yeah i think i think one of the key things about the vr now um i think we're all familiar with with people standing around in a you know an enclosed arena with their vr headsets on holding guns doing kind of virtual shooter things but now it's expanded way beyond that and those were those were okay but they were they are problematic because you normally require at least one or two people to to staff the thing to get everybody in there in the right gear and and ready and prepared for it but now it's moved into other areas just just basic rides places where you would have had you know big screen monitor in front of you before there was a um king kong of skull island ride from raw thrills which is um it's kind of it's a sit down ride but it has a little little hydraulic movement on the on the seats but it's not it's not a big simulator or anything like that previously you'd have had a you know a big you know 75 inch or 65 inch screen in hd in front of you now you've got none of that so you just put the headphone the the headsets on there's a two seater one and it throws you around and you know there's no need now to build an entire environment or an enclosed room so you can see the screen properly so now everybody can see what you're doing previously if you like some of those old Star Wars shooters you'd have to have a big box that you'd go and sit in so it's dark enough you don't have that problem anymore and everybody can see that you're sitting there enjoying it if you want to play the ride you don't have to look in and see if anybody's playing it either and that's now expanding and as you were saying about the DOF thing, they have the huge great monster truck as well there, which is another hydraulic ride, and it is massive, that truck. It probably seats about 12 people or something in it? I believe, yes. 12 or 16 people. Yes, it's enormous. They had one which was being used for rides, but it is again a hydraulic ride, but everybody's wearing VR headsets or screens. So, yeah, now that's where VR is going. It's going into much more mainstream. And it did make me wonder, you know, bringing it back to the topic of this show, whether there's any way that could be introduced into a pinball game. You know, anybody who's ever tried to play a pinball on a boat will know that at times, if it's choppy, it can be ridiculous. Well, maybe it doesn't have to be ridiculous. Maybe you have a pinball machine on a hydraulic base and you put your VR helmet on and you play it, it doesn't even need to be a physical one. Ideally, it would be a physical one.
    13:25
    But you could have virtual pinball where the thing's moving around. You control. Rather than worry about tilting the game, you actually intentionally tilt the game in order to move the ball around. Maybe that's a way that VR can integrate with pinball in the future. It's a possibility. You know, I laugh. I'm chuckling here because I'm thinking back to a pinball game that was designed by Williams that was all this hype of VR, and they said in the year 2021, and the guy's name was Johnny Mnemonic, and he's got to make a long-distance phone call, and it's just kind of funny where we have gone from that to now with the development. I love the Star Wars one. Did you guys see that one? And it was interesting. I was talking to the guys from Raw Thrills, and the guys from Raw Thrills were telling me that they were actually not going to put a monitor so you see what everybody else is seeing. But it's kind of weird when you see people sitting there with glasses just doing this.
    14:21
    What are they seeing? Yeah, as an operator, I can say there have definitely been games over the years that have suffered because people just see somebody peering into something and they can't tell what's going on. I mean, if you go back far enough, the old gallery shooters and the submarine games always had those little extra windows that other people could see what was happening. I mean, there was a VR, one of the first VR ones was a tank game where it came down over the player, but you couldn't see anything else. And it suffered terribly because nobody knew what the other person was seeing if they were enjoying it, you know. So it's come a long way, I will say that. And VR and pinball, it's possible. Now, one interesting thing, because Dave, you used to work for ICE, I hear that there was yet another revival of ice cold beer. Yes, there was, from the Tato version. And that will be not from ice, but it's from somebody, a smaller company. They're releasing, I saw the machine, I went over there, I looked at it. It's going to have, it's literally the original Tato, smaller version, fully graphic. Looks just like it, has new server motors on it. They will operate it. Long gone are the bands to run it up and down. Also, all new codes so they can actually spot the holes differently and change the game instead of having it just controlled by the same ones, dollar bill mech, and ticket spitter. So there's still a lot of possibilities that could be put together for that. And I had the opportunity to talk to the gentleman, one of the co-owners. I was amazed. I looked more on the technical aspect, and I was talking to him. This company sources their own parts. And with the old ice-cold beer, one of the issues was joysticks. And we don't think much about this stuff. I had a nice half-hour conversation with this guy. He's an engineer, and he's amazing to talk to. They source all their own parts, and they build their own joysticks. So he was trying to copy the original equipment, and there were some issues with the joysticks. And this gentleman went out and redesigned the joysticks. And, you know, listening to him, it was just my jaws dropping listening to what he went through to get this done. Well, being at ICE, I remember we did our version of Ice Cope here with the motors and the pulleys and all that other stuff, and that's always fun. But when he told me he could do it with now no pulleys and he has it all, you know, doing that, I was like, wow, that's just going to make gameplay more reliable. Yes. So, you know, hey, I'm a gamer. I love pinball. I own 100 pinball machines. and I mean I have all not all of them but I have all the manufacturers so I don't care Martin did you have any other yeah one of the things which I think is always a problem and we're talking about trends here is although all the games are there what you really have a problem with is on location and it's going to become a much bigger problem is paying for games now when we were in IAPO we went to Dave and Buster's Dave was able to show me all the games that he worked on and say we did this on that game and I helped on that but they have their payment card system so in order to play any of these games you have to go and register and get a card top and put some credit on it and then you can go and start playing the games and And I consider that not very user-friendly. On location, particularly a smaller location, what you really want for impulse purchases is you want what they call frictionless payment, where you don't think about how you pay. It's obvious. You've already got your phone. You've already got a credit card. It's probably a contactless one as well. You just walk up to the machine, put the card on it, your phone on it, you bought a credit, you play the game. But what I've seen here, and I've seen in other shows as well in other countries, is they're all producing their own payment systems. There's one at IAPA, there was one in the UK show I went to just before I came here, and they all say, designed by the industry, for the industry. What they don't say is designed for the customer, because it's not. You don't want to have to go and download an app just to play a game of pinball. If you see a pinball machine in a bar or on location in a rest stop or somewhere, think, oh, I want to play it.
    19:08
    I don't carry any money, any cash. I don't have any coins. It's interesting, actually. Before the pandemic started, or as the pandemic started, we even started to go into lockdown in the UK, which was 2020, March 2020. I went to an ATM and got some cash out.
    19:24
    Just some notes, some bills. and I thought well okay if I need it I've got it now I don't need to travel anywhere very much just to get some money one year later I hadn't used any of those notes because basically nobody in the UK really uses cash anymore and and you kind of see that trend growing here it's a bit bit further back down the road in the US but if you if you go into the like the games room there is here, all the machines take either quarters or dollar bills. If you go into the vending machines, they all take credit cards. And that the way I think Pinball has to go along with other coin op it won even be coin op anymore it just be op We have to have a really easy way for people to buy games and that going to have to lead I think to actually doing a vending machine type payment system where at the moment on a pinball machine you put the money in and you press the start button and you start your game So, to clarify that we're transcending tokens because that's more friction and we're transcending value cards. Well, yeah, if we're talking cash. But with a vending machine, you say what you want first, it tells you how much it is, you agree, you pay. Now imagine a pinball machine was like that, you press the start button, it says one credit, one dollar. Okay, you press it again, two credits, $2. Press it again, four credits, $3. Okay, that's what I want. Bing. Done. Okay, easy. Because we all carry these payment systems around with us now. Why make it more difficult? Good point. Derek, can you bring up, I just sent you a picture, card swipe. Yeah, we, and then I'll touch on that for a second because I will tell you, the reason card swipe systems came into place is to replace the tokens. Yeah. because you've got to collect them. And the nice thing about card swipe systems is it's in-house. You've got people's money. They can do whatever. You can do bonus credits. Also keeps the employees honest.
    21:41
    There's also the hope that people will not use up all the credits they bought and walk away at the end of the day. Absolutely.
    21:47
    But they're not going to expire. If we expand on it, you'll see the Hot Wheels here has a card swipe system on it. Go ahead. Which system is that? That is an Intercard system. Okay, so there's several major brands. Yeah, Intercard, Embed, Sokoa, Seminox.
    22:05
    Replay Magazine would have been out of business long ago if they didn't have advertising from all these companies, page after page. Can we blow it up any more than that?
    22:14
    They obviously only want 90 cents. Yeah, I know. I didn't know if you could blow it up any bigger than that. Oh, yeah. Let me see if I can blow it up. Because I want to see the one on Oktoberfest. And this is a point that Martin and I have shared many times. And these pictures are from the AAMA, which is the Association of America. Domestic Trade Show. Yeah, just for the industry. Just for CoinUp. And if you see in the Oktoberfest, which is gone, it's not in the building. Sorry, nobody can buy it at this moment, but you can get it later. You will see it has a credit card. We blew it up. We just need to scroll. Just look at the right area.
    22:58
    Yeah, try the old-fashioned right arrow, left arrow sometimes. Can you download it and then blow it up? There we go. All right. So that's Hot Wheels. It's got the card swipe. The Houdini has the standard coins. The Oktoberfest, which I should have taken a better picture of, has what we call a dollar bill and credit card reader. So it is designed for barcades, that you can be very contact and just walk up, swipe a credit card, you can charge the right to your game, and then continue to play. Right, that's exactly what we need. Oktoberfest is the one we want. Yeah, Oktoberfest. I understand why people like, or operators like, to have a closed system, because it allows you to track players, see what they're playing. And also, there's quite a lot of obfuscation about the cost of a game. Correct. When you're at Dave and Buster's, it's costing 90 credits. Yeah, that Dave and Buster's, your pinball game costs 83 points. Yeah, and what is that? That's so, if you do the math, if you know the concept of relatively prime, it means that you will always have a few points on your card unless you put in $83 to use it up exactly. So either they make a lot of money or you're carrying around a few points and you're saying, hey, I got a few points. I should just throw in another dollar. And the funny thing is they don't tell you this, but I work for Dave & Buster's. The few points, you just go up to any of the skeeballs and they automatically will wipe out the card to zero and pay off the balance. Because Dave & Buster's has it set up with skeeball to pay off whatever it is. So if it's like you have .01, they'll take it and give you a free game of skeeball.
    24:41
    They have ways of doing that. I want to go a little bit deeper into this. I work for a company that we use Intercard.
    24:48
    And we're experimenting with Intercard. We have right now I think it's eight locations throughout New England, ranging from a small game room to an outlet where we have 100 machines. And one thing we're working on is, like you're saying, the contactless paper touch-on payment system. So right now we have one location where you walk in and if you have one of those microchip cards that has the signal, You can walk up to any of our kiosks, and you can touch it, and that's it. All you've got to do is touch one button, and you're done. You can either use the card system. We have the option. Or it's all done wirelessly, and it's done. You touch your card. It's done. It loads your basic card in. We have pinball machines and video games where you can physically walk up, take your credit card, touch it, and you have your credit. And the machine will tell you if you keep touching your card, it will add as many credits as you want. One of the nice features on this company that I work for is an operator. There's so much in the background that people don't realize about these. We just put it in place this week is automatic ordering. We do a lot of redemption machines. We no longer have to hire two people to do our ordering for us. Or inventory. Basically, the system does everything for us. It counts what we give out with prizes. I don't know if you've been to some of the, you go to the prize counters and they scan everything. Basically, once it's scanned, the Intercard orders everything for us. And it monitors, like if we have a product that sits for less than, you know, if it sits for 30 days and we're not moving, it will lower our power levels. And basically, it lets us make a decision. They'll send us an email, hey, this isn't doing well. And they'll give us options for what the people, what they see at other locations are selling well. So there's such a great scope of what goes on with these card readers. A lot of back office stuff that helps out. And I'm just going to play devil's advocate for one second to put out the credit card reader. That unit you saw up there, that is a $900 unit. Well, I was going to ask you what the cost of these are. And it needs to come down a lot. I guess over the long term, if they're putting them on Coke vending machines everywhere, they must make the money back eventually through that. So it's a standard dollar bill acceptor with the credit card head, which is an extra six. The dollar bill acceptor is three, so that's 900. Then you have a monthly payment for service charges of the credit card transactions. It's usually a percentage. So there's many. It's actually the Oktoberfest.
    27:27
    So there's that. Then you have to remember, you have to get into the mindsets of old operators who are on the dollar and the coin. They love the cash, and now they're going to say, well, you're going to let Big Brother watch all the money that's coming through the thing. And I will tell you, the credit card reader and that whole system counts the cash coming in. So it tells you how many bills, how many coins, how many times you've been swiped, and everything else about the game. So it's Big Brother watching. And so remember, I like to quote this, that 1980, pinball and coin-opping musicians was a $2 billion industry one quarter at a time. So just think of the money that the government would love to watch on that. So there's people out there that are a little on the scared side of that. Yeah. I don't think people appreciate how much they're being tracked anyway, but that's a different discussion. We're in a different era. Yeah. But I think once these reads become ubiquitous, then the cost will come down because there will just be so many out there and it will be standard. With coin-op, just like any other investment, we always look at return on investment. Yeah, ROI. One of our locations we just did, we put in Intercard, and we put two card readers just to facilitate people coming in. It's a very high-volume location. And everybody's talking, oh, what's the ROI, ROI? We have a very unbelievable chief financial officer and one of those card readers when you see the red boxes or whatever, $28,000 and everybody says, oh my god at a quarter at a time this is just amazing the return on investment on one of our locations was a year that's unheard of, the coin op industry is just screaming one of the sites that I do work at we have standing room only on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday people are into coin op, whether it's redemption whether it's pinball Some of our locations have five or six pinball machines. All day long, when I go in, the pinball machine is standing room only. So that's one of the things. The old operators, they cringe when they see that $28,000. Oh, my God. Again, a year return on investment is just unheard of. Right. And this brings back to memory. I'm going to go back here. Steve Kordek, Elvin Gottlieb, and Wayne Nines sitting at Expo, and we're having conversations. and they were always saying management's biggest thought was ROI and how do we sell that to operators. Because if you're going to buy a machine, we want you to recoup your money and start making money within that year because the machine is going to get played a lot and we have to do that. And then Alvin brought out some of his first games that he ever designed,
    30:16
    and they sold the operator would make their money back in a month So they were like this is the business plan And that how they stuck with it a lot of times And it ebbed and flowed I think we also have to say that the operators of this stereotype were not very adept at math. And so you couldn't give them a big equation and say, look, on the computer, This shows how it's paid back. They were very back pocket cash. Get the feel for it. How fast does this pay me back?
    30:54
    That's as much math as they want to do. Right. So now with the mindset of Stern, American Pinball, a lot of others will say is that you buy the machine, you put it on a location, and then you can sell it off after two years still at a good price. go back to the 60s and the 70s and the 80s after two years a machine title you buy for a hundred bucks now you can buy a title for like three or four thousand dollars you've already made your money plus your money back to reinvest but quite often when operators are finished with a game they throw it in the skip and smash it up just to make sure that no other operator's got it the thought of selling it to a home buyer was never part of the equation because the last time I bought it was... Come down, come down. It's just a history. Well, all right, so you guys have all bought home. You have pinball machines. Have you ever gotten one where all the coin mechs and all the coin wires have been cut out or the coin returns are missing? It's because the operator didn't... He sold off the game, and he didn't want that to come back to bite him in the butt. So they take out all the mechs and usually clean off the coin door and sell it to the home operator with just one button. Start up the game, you're good. You know, so... Other things at IAPA? Brian, do you have any particular other standouts? Well, one thing that I notice is food.
    32:14
    We had vendors that were there that used pretzels, for example. I think it was Ted's Pretzels. Yes, yes. The line, and they give out free samples. I figured that it was the new, latest, greatest. The line spent half this floor plan one time. The food vendors and how they're bringing stuff out is just amazing. Lots of dogs. There's another one that was there. people lined up for these things people waited in line for half an hour to get lots of dots there were just a lot so many facets of the industry at this show you don't think about it roller coasters was a good example that I found fascinating there's a company that makes the track there's a company that makes the wheel there's a company that makes the carts you just don't go one place and say yeah I need this There's companies that make every little item, and a lot of them are based in the United States that I found. And bumper cars? Bumper cars were very big.
    33:15
    Merry-go-round horses? Yep, merry-go-round horses. The other thing that I found very big was go-carts. You have an option between the new technology, which is electric, and then you have the old technology, which is gas. And when you see these things, the new safety that were incorporated into the safety features, it was just amazing. And talking to these people, they get it down to the exact penny of what each car is going to run, how long it's going to cost you to pay. It was just amazing to see. They have that so that if you have X amount of gas, even in the gold gas carts, they know exactly how much money that you will run, and you have to keep it at a specific time, and you will be making enough money to pay for themselves. Let me just give a blatant plug then for Pinball News and say if you want to see, I think all the companies that we've been talking about are all featured in the Pinball News report from IAFA. Pinballnews.com. Which is on the pinballnews.com website right now. Yep. Along with quite a lot of a report from this show as well. Very good. As always, Martin is doing a cumulative report, so it looks like the same thing on the front page of pinballnews.com, but when you drill down, you'll see how much he's added down to the bottom. Yeah, it's been done day by day, so Thursday and then Friday, yesterday's stuff, and then obviously today. I'm going to be updating it in between seminars today. I always love when Martin goes to shows because you know you're going to get the whole story of what's going on. The only other thing I wanted to say about IAAPA was the bowling machines. You guys missed all the bowling machines. Oh, yes. Duck pins are back. You can play real duck pins here in Massachusetts and nearby Connecticut and see if you like it the old way, but now there's electronic ... All over the place. They're virtual or ... No, not for the ... Are you hitting a real pin with a real ball? So again, the company that I work for has multiple facets into it. One of them is bowling alleys throughout Massachusetts, one up in Amesbury, one in Malden. I'm going to give a plug, which is town line. The old bowling alleys, the mechanisms, you have to hire one or two technicians to keep them. The last bowling alley that this company did, they're paying two gentlemen $60,000 a year to be on call to fix their machines. They've eliminated all the mechanics and all the ... The power consumption is amazing. It's mind-boggling when you see the power consumption. These new bowling alleys take up a quarter of the size of what the old ones did. They run on servos instead of these big drive motors. They've got a string to it, and everybody's like, oh, my God, a bowling pin with a string to it. Basically, it's this fiber string that's weightless. You don't even know it exists. It plays specifically like a bowling alley. Townline just converted 48 of their alleys to this and the amount of just in electricity in a year they figure it's going to be about $70,000 they're going to save and again we all talk ROI their return on investment for this 48 lanes is going to be 4 years which is amazing it's just another one of the locations that we have which is they do candle pin and they do big ball They just converted all their lanes. They only have 24. But again, they've eliminated $120,000 on a technician. All the maintenance can be done. One of the big things is the safety factors with the old equipment. Big safety factors. Yeah. These, there's nothing. Except for getting hit by a bowling ball coming at you by an Eric Ball. There's no safety factors.
    37:04
    It's minimum. There's six parts that can wear. It's like ten little buttons. You push it and it just does it. I worked for Dave & Buster's, if you know my history, and I used to repair pinball, not pinball, but bowling alleys, and those decks. And when we drop a deck on the thing, you make sure that it's clear because that's a lot of moving parts under there and a lot of heavy equipment.
    37:29
    But this makes it so much easier to run a bowling alley. that, you know, days of your grandfather's bowling alley or what they call a pin guy, a guy up there pushing the pins in the right spots is over, and now it's all automated with motors and strings. So very cool. And, of course, this being IAPA, there's always the extreme opposite. You're talking about having shorter bowling alleys. Well, of course, there's the enormously long one, which is all LED lit now. It has LEDs that run down both sides of the lane, which is the lane is now twice as long so 120 feet then because of right 60 feet is the normal yes 60 is the normal it may have been about 100 yeah it's about it's about that size but it's also got it's got rubber bumpers a rubber that run down where the gutter is and you're actually intended to hit that with the ball um because the the leds um they change color as it goes down the lane. So you have to hit it at the right colour in order to multiply your scoring which makes it a very different game and very weird.
    38:37
    And I accidentally dropped my lens cap onto the bowling area and walked onto it in order to get it and man that is slippery that floor. I very nearly fell over on that. But it's a very impressive looking piece and obviously it's all electronic and it doesn't use standard scoring, it uses a different scoring system where you do these multipliers. But it's still bowling, but it's a different form of it, and it's a huge piece, though. It brings the technology into the modern era.
    39:10
    Your comment about the bumpers, you know, growing up, stay away from the gutters. They entice you to hit the gutter. Like you said, one of the games that we were watching, it would light up green, red, yellow. If you hit the red, it would actually subtract points from you. If you hit the green, the yellow would just give you a couple points. Again, the whole show was just fascinating on the technology, how things have come along. And I would just point out this, too. One thing is lane maintenance on bowling alleys has always been big. Over the last couple of years, I've just kept seeing them come up with newer composites, newer materials that cut down on lane maintenance. Well, that's the thing about these shows. You keep going in there, every year they have something new. Think about this. on an average, a large, large booth, okay, could cost somewhere in the balance $50,000 to $60,000.
    40:03
    So if a company is putting $50,000 to $60,000 into a booth for three or four days, you know they're going to have a product that's got a price tag that's big, but also it's going to be revolutionary. So they're really working hard, and they're putting a lot of time and R&D on that. So it's always great to go to IAFO. All right. Well, thanks very much for giving us that summary. No problem. Thank you.