NOVOMATIC From Gumpoldskirchen to the World
Twenty-five years after his first visit to Gumpoldskirchen, G3’s Lewis Pek looks back at NOVOMATIC’s journey from an ambitious Austrian gaming company to a global technology group, as it celebrates multiple anniversaries.
NOVOMATIC’s 45th anniversary in 2025 was a milestone, marking the development of a company founded by just 12 people in Lower Austria into one of the world’s largest gaming technology groups. It also precedes two anniversaries this year that connect closely with an important period in the company’s history. Book of Ra, one of NOVOMATIC’s most recognisable games, celebrates
its 25th anniversary, while Greentube also marks 25 years. Both stories can be traced back to around the turn of the millennium, when NOVO- MATIC itself was entering another phase of international and technological expansion. It was also around this time, in 2001, that I first visited NO- VOMATIC in Gumpoldskirchen and met Tomas Graf. Returning 25 years later provides a useful point of comparison between the company that existed then and the Group it has become today. Te difference in scale is considerable. Around 2000/01, NOVOMATIC employed approximately 2,000 people
worldwide, including 700 in Austria and around 400 at Gumpoldskirchen. Te headquarters occupied approximately 56,000sq.m. Today, the Group employs more than 26,000 people worldwide, with around 1,700 in Austria and 1,100 at Gumpoldskirchen. Te headquarters has expanded to approximately 287,000sq.m. Te figures capture part of the transformation, but the intervening 25 years also encompass NO- VOMATIC’s expansion into new markets, major acquisitions, the growth of its operating businesses and the development of an increasingly broad technology portfolio. To understand that development, however, it is necessary to go back another 20 years - to the beginnings of NOVOMATIC in Gumpoldskirchen in 1980.
STARTING IN GUMPOLDSKIRCHEN Professor Johann F. Graf founded NOVOMATIC at the age of 33 with 12 employees and starting capital of 50,000 Austrian schillings, equivalent to approximately €3,600. Its first home was the former premises of a wine merchant in Gumpoldskirchen. Te young company began producing slot machines under the ADMIRAL brand and became general agent for gaming terminals from British manufacturer JPM. Expansion into Germany, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland fol- lowed, establishing internationalisation as an important part of the business relatively early in its development.
“In truth, from the very outset, our home market was never Austria
- it was the whole world,” Professor Graf has said of the approach. Te opening of Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron
Curtain in 1989 created further opportunities. During the 1990s, NO- VOMATIC supplied complete equipment packages to casinos inter- nationally and established strong positions in several countries that would later become EU member states. ADMIRAL Sportwetten was established in 1991 and subsequently became a leading player in the Austrian sports betting market. Technology was developing alongside that geographical expansion. NOVOMATIC moved towards electronic gaming while electromechanical systems remained prevalent across much of the industry. Te introduction of the Coolfire gaming hardware platform in 1997 represented an important step, while Novo TouchBet Live Roulette combined live roulette with individual electronic player terminals.
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