Ticket vs Ticketless Debate Rages On & Yours Truly is Laughing All the Way to the Bank!

Tickets and ticket bundles make the best prizes for cranes and rotary merchandisers. Going ticketless can cost you a lot of potential game revenue.

Knock It Off Rotary 4 Pl (Elaut) with ticket rolls as prizes priced at 50 cents/play shattered its all-time revenue record with a one-week collection of $7426.00 with a ticket win of 30.69% for WE 1-1-16 and again ranked #3 overall and the #1 merchandise by a wide margin. The story is even more amazing because 1 of the 4 player positions was down for the entire week. Had that player position been working, the KIO might have earned over $10,000! KIO awarded more than 300,000 redemption tickets for the week.

Another reason why KIO isn’t making a lot more money is that there are now 8 other merchandise dispensing games at the Test Location that award bundles or bricks of tickets. The KIO is now almost 20 years old. I personally helped design and name KIO in conjunction with Elaut Belgium, incorporating 42 new innovations over the former Elaut 4 player rotary. This year I again had the opportunity to consult with Elaut on the design of their Tower of Tickets 4 player rotary. Tower of Tickets is now being manufactured in the U.S. by Bay-Tek for Elaut.

Ticket Candy Crane again made the Top 10 Combined List ranking #7 overall and #3 in the merchandiser category, earning $3732.00 (it has done better) with a ticket win of 26.43% for WE 1-1-16. Alpha-Omega Amusements & Sales has been working closely with Coast to Coast/Elaut testing two updated version prototype ticket candy cranes over the past few months. In each case, the Ticket Candy Crane was the #1 merchandiser at each location.

The Return on Investment (ROI) of these merchandisrs is through the roof and therefore are our best profit centers. The ROI of our Ticket Candy Crane for 2015 was 5000% ($50,000 Net Rev/$1000). The ROI of our Knock It Off Rotary for 2015 was 3333% ($100,000 Net Rev/$3000). Both ROI’s are actually much higher, perhaps even double. I used $1000 as the value of the Ticket Candy Crane and it is much closer to $500 as it is a very old Smart Candy Crane that we made some adjustments to. I used $3000 as the value of our 10+-year-old Knock It Off Rotary and that value is more likely $1000 or less, but be assured that I have no intentions of ever selling it. Both games should go to the Amusement Game Hall of Fame!

Coast to Coast/Elaut and Alpha-Omega Sales will go into production with ‘Tickets-Tickets-Tickets’ that will be sold exclusively through Alpha-Omega Sales under the ‘Frank the Crank Approved’ label. Tickets-Tickets-Tickets will be available for sale in June 2016 at the very reasonable price of $1895 FOB East Brunswick, NJ.

Based on testing two Tickets-Tickets-Tickets for 4 months in B+ ranked locations and the Ticket Candy Crane for 2 years in an A+ location, the 3 cranes have averaged approximately $1000/week gross with a ticket win% of 30%. The ROI on Tickets-Tickets-Tickets is estimated to be a net of 1650% (after prize costs have been deducted) or 17.5 times its purchase price (including shipping & sales tax). Not too bad of an investment! Even if you place Tickets-Tickets-Tickets in B locations and average $500/week gross, that is an ROI of 825%. If you are a revenue-share operator with a 50/50 split, then your ROI would only be 412%.