the last time this subject came up, the consensus was routing pinballs these days is purely charity work.

I'd like nothing more than for that to be the case. I would love to play some pinball on location.

I'm finding ROI takes 2-3 years for a brand new Stern Pro, in locations that have high foot traffic and visibility.

I can't afford to operate many new pins, and much older pins (late 80's-90's) seem to earn about the same as brand new ones, at a lower price per play. From that perspective, it makes much more sense for me to operate older pins, especially in the $1000-$1500 range, since they can pay for themselves in a year or less.

I wouldn't exactly call it charity work, but I wouldn't be able to make a living off of operating pins alone, that's for sure.

I haven't been around long enough to compare today's earnings with those from the 80's and 90's.

-Mark

I think the model is broken. Look at Headquarters in Chicago, their games are on free play. They just want you in there buying drinks. Emporium, which competes with them, is pay to play, but it's one token a game. They're making money off liquor sales, the games are just there to keep you drinking and coming back.

Emporium's model makes sense. And even at one token ($0.25) per play, they are making money on their pins and vids...and you have to think to put in a token before playing, and buy it first...you are not just hitting the start button repeatedly like it's on free play. But yes, alcohol is where their big money is.

Headquarters' model is kind of broken, with all games on free play, and no entry fee or cover charge. Their machines are played non-stop for several hours per day, and they don't have the staff to maintain them when they break down. I'm wondering if they have a budget to replace machines, too, since they will wear out much more quickly than an average location pin.

-Mark

The model for pins is to run them for a year, keep them clean and working while out, then bring them in and sell them for what you paid the distributor or more. That is the only way to realize any kind of profit in operating a new pinball.

It worked for games like POTC, TSPP, LOTR, Tron, Elvis, etc. Did not work for stuff like 24, RBION, RCT, etc.

-Mike

Because if you are a new operator, and don't have a lot of older games on hand. That is what they do.

LTG : )

Many of the new operators don't have the years of skills to maintain them either. So they think buying new will lessen their problems.

LTG : )

That's a whopper of a question asked to a very narrow audience. How many operators you figure are here that are currently operating games AND operated games 20 to 30 years ago? Lloyd and how many more? Secondly, that's kind of a rude question. You're basically asking people what their income is for the last 20 to 30 years. Not cool. The IRS doesn't even go that far back. If you want know what pins are making, go out and play. If there are no good games on location in your area, put yours out and report back here later.

Where? Maybe in Portland, but I doubt anywhere else. I know an operator in my area that operates about 20 games and has a full time day job.

How long have either of them been in business? I bet neither of them are close to Shorty's in Seattle, which has been around for about 15 years now. At Shortys, games are full price.

I doubt that pins on free play or even a token a play is a sustainable business model. I'll bet if we check back in a few years that pins at these locations are full price to play, in rough shape, or gone. It costs real money to maintain pins on location, that money has to come from somewhere. Also, more money is needed to buy new games when the old games wear out.

The model that has worked for us in the bay area is to build a community around the games, typically a league. We now have six leagues in the greater bay area from Sacramento to San Jose.

I used to run $5 tournaments every two weeks on Tuesday nights at a bar. They were competitive, of course, but as much about the socializing side of pinball.

Over the course of about six months it made the place a destination. It went from four games to six, including a MM and a new ACDC. The bar owner would give me coupons for a free drink or appetizer, which I raffled off and gave to first timers (they broke even no matter how good/bad they played). The operator is a friend of mine and kept the games in great shape.

Everyone wins - the bar and operator get business, we got great games and an opportunity to hang out with other pinheads over some drinks, earn some wppr points and make a few bucks if we won.

Before long, I would go to play a few games after work and there would be four or five people already there. Players started telling other players and the attendance continued to increase. We got 47 players for our ACDC launch party on a Tuesday. Another time we got 40 players after the local indie paper published a blurb about my tournaments.

This isn't the only path to success but it seems to do well around here.

Socializing through web sites and facebook is fine and all, but people also want that face to face interaction. They want to put up a score and get cheered by their fellow players or talk tech or chat up the girls. Personally, I don't feel that just putting games in a space is enough anymore. People have too many entertainment options, and lets face it, pinball is not an easy game to learn. But if you engage people and turn the whole thing into an event, then they're going to have fun whether they win or lose. When they see how good players play, they learn and get better. If they make a few friends over the course of the evening, they have yet another reason to come back next time.

Its very similar; and many similar threads have been started.

I have said it before and I will say it again... if pins were earning hundreds and hundreds of dollars each per week (for many months on end) in average locations then you would see pinball out there a hell of a lot more often than you currently do.

Do you think operators let a decently profitable side of their business just slip their minds?

If it was making decent money, you would not have hobbyist operators stepping up and "doing it for the good of pinball".

And I am not saying that to be mean, just seems rational. Either that or there is a big conspiracy to keep new blood out of the operating racket and pinball is actually super profitable...

I am not an old timer operator (very few on Pinside I'd bet), but I'm in the amusement business and know at least a couple dozen of them.

Operating pinballs (or anything, really) today is nothing like it was in the past. In the 90s, a pin would pay for itself many times over in a few years. Making tens of thousands of dollars on a single pin over the years was not uncommon, especially for something like an Addams Family.

Even 10 years ago you could make decent money operating a pin; maybe pay for itself a couple times over.

More recently, most of the operators I know have been cashing out on those pins, like Guido said. Most of the pins have paid for themselves many times over, and now the operators are getting nearly what they bought the machine for as an added bonus (sans taxes from profit after depreciation...maybe).

Very recently, most of the newer pins I get from operators are just being sold as damage control. They haven't even paid for themselves as much as 50%, but the operators want out while they can still get what they have in it. Most of the pins I know/have that are still on location are there because the operator has other games there that are actually making money (usually an internet jukebox), and the owner of the place just wants a pin there. Gotta keep 'em happy!

There are some "pin locations", especially newer ones, where you see multiple pins with the same group of customers/community going back to the games regularly. Those guys are usually into it for the fun of it and rarely get over breaking even. Unless you account for the side business of selling food/drink, the pins themselves, etc.

Hope that satisfies.

based on how often I read on pinside of games being set for cheap, or people who think pinball should not cost more than 25 cents, how could an operator possibly make any money?

I can't answer regarding the 90s, I only have experience running games for almost 1.5 years in one location. One game, Iron Man, has been there the entire time. It is one of the most played games and it still hasn't paid for itself. Maybe it will in another year, if people keep playing it the way they have in the past.

Of the other games, the only one that has fully paid for itself and made a little more is Tri Zone. And that is at 25 cents/play. The only way it has done this is because the game was inexpensive to begin with. A lot of people only want to spend a quarter and bang the ball around. Especially kids. That leads me to this point from marcos:

I've also found this to be true for the most part. I wish it wasn't this way, but there is a reason that classic titles are classic titles. They still appeal to people today, even those who have never seen the game before. Wizard of Oz has been a nice change, it brings in people and is doing good. It helps cashflow, but at a higher cost outlay.

If you look at how much I make after taxes and the split with the location, then look at how much capital is sitting there, and look at the time I spend keeping the games in the condition they are, I'm crazy. The only way I can do it is because I have one location and it is close to where I live. If I was trying to do this in several places with several games, something would have to suffer, and that would be the quality of the games and the experience. I.e. stuff would be broken and dirty.

The only way I'd make money on this venture right now is if I sold everything. The money I'd get from the sale plus my earnings over the last year and a half would make me come out ahead. That's how I justify doing this because if it were for income alone, the numbers just don't add up.

I wonder what modeling Stern has done for this. Gary insists that his primary market is still operators, but it's hard to see operators making reasonable ROI when a new game purchase is $5K+

The operator better learn how.

LTG : )

No, especially since so little in coin op is earning. They wouldn't ignore something that is.

LTG : )

I wonder if some of them do more harm than good.

Pop on the scene, put out a bunch of new pins. Everybody is happy that pinball is making a comeback. Then they disappear after they realize what a blood bath it became. While everyone is waiting for someone to do it again, they wonder what happened to the other pins in the area before the new op showed up ?

LTG : )

I know in my area, if myself and one other guy wasn't doing it, no large commercial operator would do it. I think everyone would say I'm doing more good than harm because the other alternative is to go back to the way things were 1.5 years ago: one or two broken machines sitting in restaurants spread around the entire metro area.

Even if I disappear tomorrow, I've done some good that never would have happened if pinball were left solely to the amusement companies in the area. Hundreds if not thousands of kids now know what a pinball machine is and have actually played one. They already knew what a redemption machine was. I know people who have bought Wizard of Oz after playing it at my location. I know others that have bought their first machine after discovering or rediscovering pinball at my location. I don't see how any of this could be bad for pinball.

Yes, in an area barren of pinball. You are doing good. A lot of it.

LTG : )

If it's a barcade, it's totally sustainable. There's not much of a living in owning an arcade these days...but a bar? $$$$ If a bar is a 'barcade', the games are just there as a cool thing to get 20-30 somethings in the door. It might as well be furniture expense. The profit is in food and drinks. It's the Chuck E. Cheese model for grown-ups.

In the 70's everyone played pinballs...but 80's brought asteroids and pac and it doomed pinball from an op perspective. Still pinball attracted a lot but the kids with money were dumping into vids at the local 7-11 in SoCal.
Now even commercial vids are dead on a route because hand held systems can do what "the new video game" did. The commercial multivid 80's repros do almost as much as a well maintained pin.
Unless the manufacturers can figure out how to market pins to the everyday amusement seeker, I think pins are destined to go the way of car collector hobbyists.

This is the challenge, how can coin drop amusements compete in a 99 cent app world?

Well the free play part makes it so they don't have to pay city fees per game

that's about two-thirds of the problem - the other third is that nobody carries coins around with them anymore.

all pinball needs is people interested in playing, and a way to beam money directly out of their checking accounts.

Remember, full time route operators make money on redemption/instant prize machines, bar top touchscreens and vending machines. The rest (pins &vids) are just to keep locations balanced.

I agree that the redemption/instant prize machines are the real money makers.

As far as equipment that you might place in a bar, I think pool tables, video jukes, and ATM machines are probably your best bet for a money maker. It seems to me that bar top touchscreens are on the way out, probably because everyone is sitting at the bar staring at their phone At least, that is what I am seeing.

I talked to someone with a WOZ on route and he said it was on pace to break even in about 2-3 years. That's with a 50/50 split I think. Not sure if that's normal, but for an Op that seems long to me to make it a business, but then again like someone said earlier, if you've got some $2000 machines in play, they get a lot of play too and that breakeven ROI is much shorter.

I also hear that machines like Simpsons always do well on location b/c of the theme - they attract lots of people who just think it looks fun vs. us pinheads who might play more of the Top 100 type games vs a theme that might appeal to families and kids...

That means people are already used to the idea of spending $1.00 on a small amount of entertainment (considering most of those 99 cent games are usually throw-away games). As others have said, payment systems need to be modernized. Credit card readers, Cell-phone-payment-accepters (however those work), etc. They should be included at no additional cost to the operator on every machine.

The real problem with 99 cent apps is they usually do a better job at teaching a new player how to play the game than a pinball machine does. Pinball machines should assume the person walking up has never even seen one before, and should be crystal clear about how to play it (granted, operators could pick up the slack here and figure out ways of providing those instructions)

Licensing fees must be a big reason why you don't see more old machines out in the wild. If you have to pay $30 per machine annually, $100 per machine annually, or more, that would be a big chunk of the annual revenue of an old $0.25 per play machine in some random restaurant.

and they have fees (monthly and / or per use) other then the hardware cost.