Hey W_P

Check out this thread:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pins-on-location-profit

Go for it!

Hate to be negative (I think it's always great when someone can route a pinball), but there are many issues:
1. If it breaks down, it isn't earning money
2. If it breaks down, your losing money in parts
3. If people get bored, it isn't earning money
4. What does the venue want for it's cut
5. What local city taxes do you have to pay as a coin-op business

In short, it seems impossible to turn a profit on a pinball. Seems like you'd be lucky if you could earn enough money to pay off the price of the pinball.

How much on average does a machine earn a day?

If its just 20.00 per day. Thats 600.00 month. 7200.00 per yr.

My Rfm has over 30000 plays on it and is still plays like new. At. 50 cent per play thats 15k of revenue.

Plus i love to see pins in the wild for all to enjoy. Go for it!

30,000 plays! Wow, that's incredible. An average of, like, seven a day since it was built.

Av8 said: $20 per day, $600/mo, $7200/yr

I suspect if that were anywhere close to reality, you'd see a lot more pins in the wild.

I'd suggest $20 per week for the operators take is a much more realistic expectation.

Much closer to the truth. All depends on location.

$20 per week may even be high, set your expectations low. We all love pinball, but most others will just ignore the machine, it may go a few days without even getting a play.

You need to find out about license requirements, and make sure you have insurance. If your machine catches fire and burns down the place, you better be insured. If the machine falls, even through no fault of your own, and lands on a kid, you better be insured. If a kid gets electrocuted because of some goofy fluke (or from him doing something stupid), you better be insured. You will take the hit for it. Be insured through the gills or you are asking for it.

Also, do not expect to make any money. There will be very little earnings, which then must be split with the location. What is left will more than be taken up in parts, maintenance supplies, etc. Plus consider all of your time cleaning, waxing, fixing, etc. And expect the 1am phone calls demanding that you come fix your machine. One broken part can easily wipe out your earnings for a month or more.

Maybe I am making it sound worse than it will be, but be prepared for these things. If it was easy and there was money to be made, pinball on location wouldn't be all but dead and we would still see arcades in every town. There is a reason those things are gone. I'm not trying to be negative, just realistic.

There are many threads about this on RGP also with much input from existing operators and those who have done it in the past. It's a pretty bleak looking venture, but if you have the time, money, and ambition to "waste", go for it. Just don't expect anything in return...do it for love of the game only.

Look for other sources of income.

I could never put my pins out there to get slammed, spilled on and mishandled. Just me though.

Dont listen to all the negative talk. Just because they failed doesnt mean you shouldnt try. Get a good used machine and if it doesnt work just sell it and get your money back. good pins arent going down in value.

Do it for the experience and to support and share pinball.

Location is key obviously! If it doesnt make 10 bucks a day move it.

Avg. split is generally 50/50 with the location.

Yes, you are basically paying them to have your machines there. And they make great profit off of food/drinks from the players.

But, on the flip side, what are your options? Set them up on your front lawn? Besides opening your own place, they've got all the advantage when it comes to negotiating a rate.

I can think of a lot of things for you to consider.

Check with local distributors, they can put you in touch with AMOA or state associations that might be a good source of info.

Be sure you meet zoning, license, and insurance requirements.

If it's a great location with everything but pinball, the existing op won't let you horn in on his investment, you'll need all the games to get the location.

Most likely you'll be condemned to secondary locations, where profits are tiny and risk to equipment huge. Like laundromats or seasonal places.

And you are on call 24/7. Just sitting down to dinner with the family, too bad - fix your game or it's out on the street.

Learn all you can, to have the best chance at success.

LTG

$50 in a month is realistic in many locations.

50/50 split with locations that know the biz, new locations will sometimes accept 25/75 because they don't know any better.

Back in the day, a machine might cost $2000 and a replacement ramp $15.

If a ramp cracks nowadays (often $125), you might be out 3-5 months earnings (and the ramps are much more brittle now than when they were new).

A new machine is $6000 and would take 8000 plays (@ 75 cents) to break even. If your game gets 150 plays a month, it will only take 5 years to pay it off.

In 5 years, you have replaced many parts (bulbs, transistors, plastics, rubbers), have shopped the game, came out to unstick balls, swapped the game with others (2x a year or so you have to freshen up your line up as the till starts to go down), paid for your gas and time, paid insurance, paid city and state vending license, paid Uncle Sam, and paid 50% of your income to the bar owner.

Still think you can make a profit?

Or, you buy an $800 machine, shop it out and put it on location. Who says you have to buy a new TRON LE to put on location?

Like I said in my other thread, I'm on track to pay one machine off this year. And I'm introducing more and more people to pinball (and bringing back some that forgot about pinball). And I've sold two pins to people who contacted me via email from my instruction cards.

Still think you can make a profit?

Agree. Pins are so rare now and that people will play them. And buy them. Dont listen to negative BS.

I've operated my Batman Forever for 1 month as of last week at a record shop/skate shop
and my Tales from the Crypt at a goth/clothing/jewelry store for a month as of this friday.
I'll post this time next year my results from those 2 machines.
I'll have more machines on location as 2012 unfolds.

If pins were profitable operators wouldn't be getting out of them.

But since you are introducing more people to pinball, why worry about profit ?

LTG

Exactly! I would not quit my day job to operate pins. Total sideline biz, both to keep the silver ball alive, and also help fund my collection. If I tried to feed my family off what I bring in through pins, we'd all starve!

Absolutely put some pins on location. Collectors are babies sometimes, pinball machines were made to withstand drunks, punks, and skunks kicking them around a little.

Nobody is trying to make a living at it, but in the right location and with the right game you can expect to expand both your future pin fund, acquire extra room for your home collection, and at the same time be converting new pinheads to this wonderful hobby.

Forget the naysayers, as long as you have realistic expectations, you will be happy with your decision. Being a good local op is like being a sweet ambassador to the silver ball. How many of us would be here on this forum if we never played a pinball out on location to get us hooked?

Man caves kill pinball slowly.

Big kudos to you smokedog for keeping the love of the game alive!

Not trying to be negative, but the OP asked if he could make money and I gave my opinion.

No need for some of you to start crying like babies about it.
-

I used to have a good size route, and know how much it costs for insurance, taxes, licenses, parts, fuel, mileage, repairs and time.

You can run a game without insurance (the bar's insurance does NOT cover you at all), but the first time someone gets hurt by your machine (electric shock, hits their head in a fight, flips it...) you will lose all of your life's savings just defending yourself in court. Don't kid yourself, ask the bar owner how much the INJURY portion of his liability insurance is. Ask your wife if $20 a week "profit" is worth the nest egg.

You can run a game without a license, but when the city or state confiscates it, you NEVER get it back. You might be allowed to buy it back at auction, but some states forbid it.

Most of the people here are in their 50s & 60s, so that means they earn $50,000-$70,000 a year (the old "you should earn $1100 per year of age" formula). That means you are worth $25- 40 dollars a hour.

Finally, being in your 50s, you are probably near the 30% tax bracket, give or take.
-

Now if you are just operating a machine as some sort of pinball ambassador, spreading the goodness of the silver ball - more power to you.

But truly making a real, on paper profit... I don't think so.

(just my opinion, based on my real life experiences. No need to start crying like I peed on your parade)

Just two sides of a coin man. There are at six different operators in my city who make it worth their while somehow. And I was encouraging winball_pizard to do the same. Is it hard? No doubt. But laws vary so much from state to state that you were just too far on one side and too negative to be completely helpful. There clearly is something in your argument, but there also is something to ours. You're not being vilified, just having some people disagree with you.

There's got to be something better than home collections. In a way, the demand for home collections only exists because of very few arcades and well playing machines in many areas. If I lived in Portland, I might not own any machines - unless specifically I was collecting as a homeowner, for a route, or to start an arcade. There is a lot of reactionary belief toward anything that could drive the secondary market down - like lots of nice machines on location.

Starting your own arcade in an un-pinball friendly city is more manageable in some ways than routing a large number of machines. Someone has started a small arcade here in Anchorage. To that person, going the vending route was less practical due to having to drive around, etc.

In a way, home collections can be alienating. The machines rarely see social use. I wish Anchorage was a pinball city more than I wish I had 25 games at home.

I thought the Gary Stern Southern Pinball video posted on here a while ago was fascinating. (It's kind of glitchy video though.) He talks about how machines became too complicated for the casual user on location.

The heart and soul of pinball is cornershop bagatelle. So, I find it ironic if the future of pinball is HUO machines, with flippers!

Very well said.

It has been about a year I was wondering if you had an update? This idea is becoming more and more intriguing to me and was hoping for good news.

Id Like to know what the numbers showed up. Been thinking about doing something like this for awhile.

It was interesting but then they go and release Star Trek which in my opinion is a hard and unforgiving game for the casual player.

Pm him?

Every location is different. Two similar bars across the street from each other can have very different earnings. Also remember that pinball is an all cash business. So take anything you read here about earnings with a grain of salt.

Unless you live (operate) in the pacific northwest, earnings shouldn't be your primary consideration. It is the best possible way to contribute to the hobby though (assuming you're not Steve Ritchie).

Huh? My strategy is to hit that big target right in the middle of the playfield. I get at least one multiball every game. Should I be doing something else?

Location Location Location

Also helps to know people.

Very hard to make good profit but very easy with some effort to make a profit.

I should add that now is a very good time to solicit new locations. I recently added a new location and the negotiations took 10 minutes tops. Pinball is popular right now. Don't try to steal anyone's location, but do solicit pin-less pizza parlors, bars and music stores (my new location). If the business owner is new to pins, show him how the earnings audits work, so he knows there will be no shenanigans. Typical split is 50/50. If all your games are brand new, you might ask for more. Agree on a split with the condition that you revisit the split after a month or two. Do NOT promise any earnings. Do promise outstanding maintenance.

Phishrace you hit the nail right on the head

image.jpg

anyone who owns a pin can strike a deal and put it on location. how it earns depends if you are on top of repairs, keeping them clean and making sure they work 100%, have the right titles on location, have it properly setup, . You then have to outweigh repairs, parts, upkeep vs what the game actually makes. Also, is the wear going to drop the games value so when you pull the game to sell it , it sells for less and you just broke even or lost out overall.

lots of variables...
its not easy. many try, very few get it and actually do what it entails.

You forgot the split with the location owner. Giving 50% to them, you need 16,000 plays at $.75 each to pay it off and at 150 plays per month, it will take 10 years to break even, not considering broken parts and the cost of money.

Given this, you will need a GREAT location to make a new pin profitable. The restored, older pins may be more viable but you have higher parts cost and less reliability.

I have an Addams Family "on route", but it's at an office (with about 25 people). This is an office that doesn't have any visitors, so it's just the regular employees playing. They pay me monthly, and the machine is set on freeplay. I had a great relationship with this company...shared office space with them for 2 years (though I don't anymore). I'm mostly doing this with the idea of having someone else fund a pinball purchase that I'm not willing to pay for myself.

It's only been about 5 weeks, and there have been 3 service calls so far. It's still too early to tell if this is going to be worth it in the long run. I try to fix things as quick as possible, but they understand it usually takes a day or two. My thoughts so far:

- I have a key to the office, so I can go in really early or late at night to work on the machine. Or play it.
- I like playing and working on machines, and I'd be doing this at home anyway...this is just a 5 minute drive instead of a walk downstairs to the basement.
- The left flipper broke while I was out of the country, so they went about a week without being able to play - but were understanding (it was over the holidays, so a lot of people weren't in the office anyway).
- They played ~1000 games in the first month.
- It has been more service calls than I was imagining, but I'm not sure if I've been lucky or unlucky. Wire came detached from the swamp kickout, left flipper stopped working, and shooter knob handle cracked in half. I got the machine used and played it hard for a month before setting it up in the office so I could get more familiar with it and fix any issues that came up.

They already want a second machine. I'm particularly excited about that because it will reduce the number of plays on each machine, and I'll have a two in one location which should be easier on maintenance. Based on how it has gone so far, I would be willing to try out another location as well - but it would have to be nearby as well. I've talked to a few other companies, but so far no one has taken me up on it.

I'm curious what you guys think is the right price for this type of arrangement.

As I mentioned above, unless you operate in the pacific northwest, your primary consideration shouldn't be earnings. That said, here in the SF bay area, I recently sold a 5 year old Stern I routed since NIB and sold it for 25% more than I paid for it. Coin drop more than paid for the game before that. I got a good deal on the game when it was new, but you get the idea. Your leaving out a pretty important part of the equation. Go back and check your math.

Most pins I see on "location" are trashed out garbage that probably cost the Op $800 or so.

And, since its a cash business, if you can't figure out how to lower your "tax bracket", then yeah, no way to make money

I see you have 9 games. Have you considered operating any of yours?

My minty Genie was way less than $800. Folks love it. If you don't want to operate your games, you should consider moving to the bay area instead. d

5 balls, 75 cents a play for anyone who is curious. No ball saver on a system 1, so Genie will house you one or two balls for sure. I won't put games out at 50 cents a play any more, so I bumped it up to 5 balls for 75 cents. Once bulletproofed, system 1's are rock solid on location. Mine has all original boards and LED displays.

phish race >> how do you typically set up DMD and more recent SS games for route?

how hard? open outlanes? tight tilts? setting changes? etc...

pricing?

thanks for the info.

Both of my locations cater mostly to regular (good) players, so my games are generally setup hard. Because the games are just about always clean and working 100%, I can get away with it. Each game is different. My Pirate's is really steep, to keep ball times down. My AC/DC pro is pretty much factory, because it was fast right out of the box. Jacking up my BSD (upgraded flipper coils) only makes it more fun, so the tilt is tight. My Ripley's is nothing like what Pat Lawlor intended, on a number of levels. Describing it here wouldn't do it justice. I try to keep things close to factory, but Ripley's needed a lot of help.

Factory outlanes whenever possible. If needed, I'll open the right outlane. Most big shots are from the right flipper and most players are right handed. Standard adjustments I change are 10 character initials, team scoring (when it works), coin door ball saver and player competition (not competition mode). Feature adjustments vary by game. On Shrek/FGY, sudden death + timer for the upper playfield (can't play it forever). Drac has the video mode set to hard (and the tight tilt mentioned above), but mostly factory otherwise. On WOF, WOF multiball difficulty is set to easy (factory is extra easy, which is should be called stupid easy). Generally speaking, I shoot for a 3 minute average game time. Pirate's and WPT average more, BSD and AC/DC average slightly less. Pricing is 75 cents/ 3 for $2 for all games but Genie, which is 75 cents for a 5 ball game. Bill acceptors on all the Sterns, change machine nearby or otherwise.

How you set up your games will depend on who plays your games. If you don't have many really good players in your area, setup won't be as big a concern. Check your audits and try to keep average game times around 3 minutes. 3 minutes may not sound long, but a clean and working game that averages 3 minutes will earn just fine in a decent location.

My pleasure. You thinking about operating some of your games?

Thanks for all the info phishrace!

I am currently looking into the logistics and now seriously examining how to go about routing games. A few of us are trying to find a single location to put 4 to 6 games. We want to make a spot worth actually playing in town (opposed to the few bars with 1-2 barely working pins).

Thanks again for the info. It provides a really good template of things to think about.

my question to operators is this: How do you justify spending $8000 on a new pinball machine to put on route? ( or is this not the price operators pay?)

Well, 2 things:

1) Operators mostly put $4500 Pros on route if they are operating new games.

2) You can sell it after service and recoup a good chunk of money.

You'd still need a good location though. You wouldn't put ST where it only makes $50 a month.

dont set them up too easy with lots of extra balls and low replays or your machine will get alot of wear for little money.
find a happy medium.

Phishrace operates here in my part of the country and I think we probably have more people who are really into pinball here than some spots. However, there are a few big ops that don't seem to really support pinball as much but more the pool tables, jukeboxes, etc. That being said, I did see a woman doing some work on the Metallica at a douchey bar and it said $260 or so as the earnings (not sure how often they clear out the money), but I know personally at the closest bar that we are there almost every night and probably only drop like $3-5 in total in machines since we can get replays etc. There are a few other regulars we see who are newly into pinball and they rarely get replays.

Of course if you did something like a private spot where people pay to play on free play etc I know that's worked in other locations. Just not sure what the laws etc are but with the resurgence of interest in pinball there may be other options. The barcade idea works too if you are willing to actually run the biz but that's a whole nother thing. I know in LA I just learned that they are doing a barcade downtown and if you own the biz then the alcohol sales are where the money is at. (We always make it a point to buy beer/drinks at any place we play to support he business and let them know we're only there for pinball

I found this thread very interesting, as I am very new to pinball and can't remember the last time I have even seen a machine in the wild.

For sake of argument, assume I just bought a NIB $5000 machine. And I only have one machine on route.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that a key element to success (ie profit) would be to know when to pull your game to sell it and recoup as much of your original $5k as you can - then, whatever money the game took in while on location is your potential earnings. (Minus, of course, taxes, mainenance, insurance, 50/50 location split, etc.)

It seems unrealistic to me that you could ever 'totally' pay off a $5k machine in a reasonable amount of time. You need to put a game out there, keep track of how much it is earning, then when interest starts to fade, sell it and put in the next one.

One machine on route will never make you money, if that is your goal.

Insurance, licensee fees, effort, maintainence... All adds up quick. need to split your time and up front costs over multiple machines if you even want to break even. Location pinball does not make dollars unless you own the location and run a barcade sort of place. Then the cash comes from no split and drinks.

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