IGT, Summit have biggest VGM market shares
Pub Date: 7/1/2006
Trends observed for the last several years in gaming machine manufacturer market shares continue apace, with Summit Gaming out of Billings, and Spielo Gaming intl. of Moncton, New Brunswick in Canada, continuing to build numbers.
There are a total of 17,384 machines as of June 1 compared to 17,315 at the same time last year.
Summit Gaming has grown its market share from June 1, 2005, to June 1 this year from 25.445 percent to 31.523 percent. Summit now fields 5,480 units.
Spielo has picked-up of 562 units in the last 12 months. The company, at two-and-a-half years into the Montana market, sports a 10.607 percent market share. Spielo has 1,844 "multi-game" machines running both poker in one box.
Summit has just 45 poker games and 212 keno games, but has installed 5,223 upgraded platforms that run both.
international Game Technology (IGT) is still the market share leader with a 31.840 share. IGT has 5,535 machines in service of which 1,123 are poker, 2,000 are keno and 2,412 are multi-game.
Former Montana powerhouse VLC, which was acquired by IGT several years ago, declined from 3,395 machines to 2,692, a market share contraction from 19.6 percent to 15.5.
All other manufacturers, with the exception of Fleetwood Manufacturing, American Gaming Technology (AGT), and U-1 Gaming, are no longer licensed in the state and thus continue to diminish.
Fleetwood, whose Keno King games utilized the Shufflemaster operating system, ran into licensing problems when IGT bought Shufflemaster in 2004. The company last year had 499 units permitted compared to 469 this year. Fleetwood showed design concepts at the Montana Tavern Association convention which featured bingo and, according to the Gambling Control Division, is very close to having approval for its new multi-game design series.
Great Falls manufacturer AGT is a relative newcomer to the scene, and rolled out its product just this year. It has 88 keno-only machines permitted and in service, but says a new round of substantial upgrades are in the works.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, July, 2006, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.