“We see the business prospects around the world picking up, which is exciting”

What are your expectations for Argentina and for Latin America in general?
I think that Argentina in general is experienced at challenges at this point. It’s preventively driven so the lotteries are looking at a more formalized regulated market, and the goal for BMM, I think, and the industry in total is to make sure that when they do formalize they also unify structure, so you don’t have the products of Mendoza doing something different than the products of Cordoba and putting more pressure on the industry. Latin America in general has always been what I call the last regulated market, meaning that there is some formalized process of wanting some stratification or wanting some sort of licensing process always been very chaotic; they accepted certifications from Nevada or Spain or South Africa or California and it’s quite quickly in the last 18 months that there has been some formalization process going on in Chile and Colombia, with Argentina also making progress in this way. And I think it is fantastic for the market, making it more stabilized and transparent. 

What differences can you see among the Latin American countries?
The markets are emerging. The interesting part of Latin America in general is that it is still a market that, if you are an operator with some substance and have some qualifications, you can handle it, but if you are not very politically driven, with enough money, it might be different.  I can open a slot hall tomorrow, and that’s fantastic for the business in general. The challenge is that you end up with people who want to do it slightly differently or end up with a lot of refurbished machines. It is not that they are bad, it’s just that it ends up in a very complicated market with a huge disparity among a small slot hall and a casino that is investing millions. And with regulations, formalizing licenses and operators, some homologations in equipment, what happens is that it is a more controlled industry, and so it is less appealing to the people that want to open up a casino just to make money. Colombia is very much in that way now, ending up with all the products that have been discontinued everywhere around the world, and some cabinet that they developed for a game that has never been seen before, and that they found the way to make work.

So you see a positive future, overall?
Oh definitely. I think it is a fantastic market. I think Argentina specifically, with its importation laws, is very challenging.  But the show traffic and the operations of the halls themselves are still fantastic. I just wish the government brings their support to this growth. 

BMM is very glad with Peru and chose the country to open our business on a formal regulated market where we opened up seven years ago. In the US we are doing fantastically well and globally we are doing quite well too. We see the business prospects around the world picking up, which is exciting.