Cosmic Unleash Operator Run Tournaments! - Coinslot January 2004

Cosmic Video Amusements will be using the ATEI to unveil the latest development in tournaments for the Merit Megatouch products. New for 2004 is the ability for operators to run their own tournaments on anyone site to complement the national TournaCHAMP competitions.

The Operator Run Tournaments (OR1) gives operators the freedom to set up and manage tournaments based on location and adds a whole new level of competition to their customers.The TournaCHAMP 'Local Hero' aspect ensures that during a national tournament someone at every site wins a prize of some kind for being
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the best player in that location. The ORT has been developed to allow sites to run a separate local tournament alongside the national to offer players more opportunity to complete for cash prizes.

Cosmic technical director Glenn Wearn explained that the ORT can help maintain income in those locations where the current national TournaCHAMP game may not have taken off. He said: "Whatever game you pick for the national tournament, you can guarantee some people in the country won't like it. Income tournament would drop if a location didn't take to a particular game but with Operator Run Tournaments you can set up a tournament using a game which that particular location likes a lot and maintain the income."

John Farrington added: "It's a really weird thing. When we've been running these tournaments parts of the country light up, but they go out in other parts of the country and this is what operators have been worried about, getting consistent income from tournaments. Fortunately this new system helps operators do just that."

Manufacturer Merit has developed the ORT specifically for the UK market after it received feedback from Cosmic’s customers and the firms have been trialing the system to make sure it is up and running for launch at ATEI,
Just as with TournaCHAMP, the system has full remote access, allowing operators to setup tournaments on machines from their office, their homes or even while they are abroad. The remote access also cuts down on the cost of sending engineers out to individual machines to setup the competitions.

Operators also have full control over the parameters as well. They can choose the duration of a tournament (from several weeks down to just a single evening), the price per play, the amount of money per credit that goes into the incremental prize pot and I the distribution of the prize pot among the top three competitors once the tournament has finished.

The system is available to operators already running TournaCHAMP and will initially be able to choose from 17 games for their ORTs, including the current number one Merit game Tri Towers 2. Merit will be continually adding to this selection through- out the year, allowing operators to provide more choice to customers.