JCM, a leader in currency handling for the casino industry, is expanding into slot machine printing and couponing with the acquisition of FutureLogic.
The latest in a wave of mergers that is dramatically changing the landscape of the gaming equipment sector in North America and worldwide brings an array of the industry’s most popular machine gaming peripherals under JCM’s roof—JCM’s own iVIZION, Universal Bill Acceptor and Vega-RC bill validators, Intelligent Cash Box and PayCheck 4 thermal printer and FutureLogic’s Ticket2Go, TableXchange and PromoNet systems.
“Since the beginning, JCM has operated with a philosophy of ‘customer first,’ and this acquisition will allow us to service our customers with more freedom of choice with unique and innovative peripheral solutions,” said JCM Global President Akiyoshi Isoi.
FutureLogic Chief Marketing Officer John Edmunds said the union will “provide a compelling offering in a variety of markets”.
“We look forward to the next phase of development for FutureLogic as it brings innovative technology and world-class customers to help fuel the growth of JCM,” he added.
No details were immediately available on the price or terms of the deal, which follows on the heels of the announcement last Friday that Scientific Games was buying Bally Technologies for US$3.3 billion in cash and the assumption of $1.8 billion of Bally debt. SciGames, a leading name in lottery systems and technologies, is paying $83.30 per share for the Las Vegas-based machine gaming giant, a premium of 38% over Bally’s closing price last Thursday.
It’s the second major acquisition in the slots sector for Scientific Games in the last year, following on the company’s $1.42 billion purchase of slot-maker WMS Industries.
Last month, global lottery giant GTECH reached an agreement to acquire International Game Technology, the largest slot-maker by market share in North America, for $6.4 billion. Bally earlier this year closed on a $1.3 billion deal to acquire SHFL entertainment, the world’s largest maker of table games shufflers and a leading name in electronic tables and table games equipment. Aristocrat recently agreed to pay $1.3 billion for Video Gaming Technologies, a leading maker of slots for the Class II tribal markets in the US, and also has acquired Paltronics, a well-known developer of slot machine bonusing and jackpot technologies.
The consolidation speaks to a fundamental realignment in an industry that is struggling to cope with slowing sales of new and replacement games to casinos that are no longer growing gaming revenues in most US markets and in many markets are seeing those revenues steadily decline. Saturation is a worrying issue now after years of jurisdictional expansion, as is gambling fatigue among increasing numbers of consumers who no longer have the wherewithal post-recession to spend the way they did. Demographics are another concern. The players who comprised the traditional slot market are aging or dying, and machine gaming, and land-based gaming as a whole, doesn’t have the same appeal as an entertainment proposition among younger audiences.
The SciGames-Bally deal is interesting as well for the return of Gavin Isaacs, who was named CEO of SciGames earlier this year and was chief operating officer of Bally before moving to SHFL, where he served as CEO and was instrumental in engineering the sale to Bally.
It is expected also that Bally CEO Richard Haddrill and Chairman David Robbins will join the SciGames board.
SciGames’ largest shareholder is Ronald Perelman, who is ranked 27th on the Forbes 400 with a net worth of $14 billion.
