Play Meter

•
cOlnman
f the month
Briton depicts
operating
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methods In
UK
A Play Meter intelView
with Peter Groom,
British operator
internationalflavor our
Play Meter, Editor and Publisher Ralph Lally
interviewed a British operator about the unusual
operating system used in the United Kingdom.
Peter Groom started in the coin-op amusements
business in England 15 years ago as a distributor
for See burg Corp. Eventually, the distributorship
was broken up and sold off in various parts, he said.
He didn't enter the operating field just yet,
diverting instead into a company called Phono-
graphic Equipment. After a stint with that group,
he then entered operating as part of a company
called Gainsmead Ltd.
With his knowledge of the distribution of phono-
graphs in Britain, he very capably fiUed a position
with his current company, Mam Inn Play Ltd., one
of the largest national phonograph operating
concerns in Great Britain.
Mam Inn Play operates some 10,000 jukeboxes,
w hich is quite a lot w hen one takes into
consideration there are only 64,000 licensed pre-
mises (authorized locations) in the country. And
most of those premises are owned by one of the 70
national brewery concerns in England. Perhaps,
only 18 per cent of the locations are owned by
individuals as "free houses, " Groom said.
Servicing all those jukeboxes, as weU as the
amusement devices operated by the firm, such as
fruit machines, amusement-with-payout machines,
pinbaU machines and a few video and pool games,
requires the efforts of a massive decentralized
system based on regional offices, Groom noted,
giving the firm a repair caU answering time of an
hour to most locations.
The British system of licensing amusement
devices and the method of operating them is
examined in this conversation with Groom. It is an
interesting and often confusing system for the
uninitiated A merican, but it leads itself to compar-
ison with the multitude of systems evident in the
United states.
The American must keep in mind while reading
about the highly competive British operating world
that the British have a valuable market in games
that are not considered gambling devices, but
which pay in cash, tokens and/or prizes.
Not only do they have to cope with government
regulating boards and the breweries that get a cut
of their income, but they also have to battle an
image problem that is in some ways worse than the
problem A merican operators have suffered from for
so long, Groom said.
.
Groom seems prosperous enough, however, and
apparently not threatened by the system. While at
the Amusement Trades Exhibition, he told Play
Meter his views of the operating situation in
Britain.
PLA Y METER: How did it strike you to become
completely immer ed in operating as opposed to
distributing? Did you find it more lucrative for
in tanc , or more profitable?
GROOM: It wa perhap more profitable, but al 0 a
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