Insight RUSSIA Modern Gaming Era
A Short History of Gaming Machines in the USSR
Bepi Mottes StylGame Canadian Distributor
Bepi entered civilian life with Scandinavian airlines’ hotel division (Raddison) in 1963, as his family had been hoteliers in the Tirol since 1807. Five years later, Bepi moved to Swaziland to supervise the construction/financing of a hotel casino as the MD. In 1979 he became the MD of Casino de Maurice, operating four casinos on the island. In 1984 he was the ‘directeur responsable’ of two casinos on the island of Reunion. A year later he managed Transkei gaming, an operator of slot halls in the then independent province of South Africa. In 1986, he moved to Reno Nevada as President of David Mercer Int., the sole distributor of Bally slots outside the US. The company was acquired by Bally, which started a sales subsidiary in Europe. As the founder and MD of Bally Gaming Int. in Hannover, Bepi reintroduced gaming machines in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In 2000, Bepi joined JCM and sold their products across the whole of Europe, retiring in 2008 as MD. In the same year he joined MEI as VP until December 2013. Since January 2015 Bepi has helped Italy-based Stylgame to promote their products on the Canadian market.
In a gaming career spanning operations, slot machine and cash handling equipment to trade association leadership, Bepi Mottes recollects his initial forays into the Russian gaming market on behalf of US gaming supplier, Bally, opening up a new frontier for the industry in the USSR
My passion for music and paintings took me to Leningrad in the early 1970s. Te ferry from Helsinki to St. Petersburg was an easy and convenient connection and the Astoria was one of the hotels where foreigners could stay. Despite being much in need of basic maintenance, the Astoria, facing the Saint Isaac cathedral and the Mariinsky palace, was history in itself: the picture galleries at the winter palace, now the Hermitage museum, the Giselle at the Mariinsky theatre, Rachmaninov at the Michalowski, the Pushkin, the summer palace, the circus.
My two sons both equally enjoyed holiday in the company of our young interpreter, while their parents enjoyed a more cultural agenda. It was a perfect family holiday with perfect July weather. And while I didn’t appreciate it at the time, the casual meeting with Intourist officers from Moscow HQ, would prove an invaluable help 10 years later as a business connection.
In the 1980s I was the Managing Director of the start- up Bally subsidiary in Hannover Germany: Bally Gaming International gmbh. Hans Kloss, President of the Berlin company Bally-Wullf, was our financier and backer. Bally Gaming International had a staff of two, John Murphy and myself. John's wife was helping to keep the office until the sister of our corporate lawyer joined us as a factotum.
Bally was marketing its first electronic slot machines, the Bally 5000, which was not an immediate success with European players. We knew we had to do something extra special to earn our secure, but modest salary.
John found that the Finnish ferries connecting Helsinki with the Soviet ports of Leningrad and Tallinn had slot machines operated by Pekka Salmi, a real entrepreneur of the old school (no money). Bally Gaming International was, therefore, the perfect
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partner. All Soviet Union hotels, accessible to foreigners, were operated by Intourist. I remembered that all Intourist hotels had a small bar where Heineken beer could be purchased in dollars or Deutsche Mark. Access to the Intourist hotels facilities was limited to foreign passport holders, but more ingenuous hotel managers regarded anybody with foreign money as a foreigner.
Te theoretical question of whether slot machines could be placed in these bars was solved by a Dutch gaming hall operator and soon the first hotel with one hundred Bally slot machines was operating in Sochi.
Te success was extraordinary to say the least. We even changed the language. Te Russian "igorni avtomat" was replaced by the word ‘Bally.’
Other hotels followed during my tenure as Managing Director, at the Peace hotel in Viborg where Finns used to visit on ‘Vodka safaris,’ as they were commonly called.
Te start of the slot operation in remote provinces did not provoke any reaction from Moscow. However, following installation at the Cosmos hotel in Moscow would be a sterner test the legality of slots machines on the extraterritorial area of duty free shops operated by the Intourist hotels with access restricted to non- Soviet citizens.
Te installation went smoothly, as did multiple installs financed by foreign investors: the Ukraine Hotel on the Moscow river facing the Russian parliament, the Rossiya on Red Square, in Novosibirsk the hotel with the city's name opposite the theatre, the Tallinn Olympic hotel (which was the start of gaming in Estonia), Sheremetyievo international airport, in Vladivostok at the Versailles and so on...
Pekka Salmi continued to be the most active investor
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