By Clyde Mooney
Gaming technology company Intralot has opted not to weigh into an argument over the potential costs of monitoring gamblers' activities if mandatory pre-commitment (MPC) comes into play.
The bulk of the debate over MPC has centred on bet limits and the cost of the technology upgrades required.
But the country's largest gaming operator, Australian Liquor and Hospitality (ALH) recently pointed out that the adjudication and policing of gamblers' pre-set limits was another burden of the reforms.
Responding to the comments, Leo Watling, CEO of Intralot – which was recently awarded a 15-year licence to monitor gaming machines in Victoria – told TheShout the company is looking at monitoring and pre-commitment as "two completely separate outcomes".
"It is not our role to determine the outcome except to say that our monitoring system can accommodate pre-commitment frameworks with the use of specific software and hardware components once the pre-commitment model is defined by government," he said.
Gaming Technologies Association (GTA) CEO Ross Ferrar told TheShout that "MPC makes no sense on many levels", and he questioned the real value of separate monitoring services in the future.
As gaming machine technology continues to improve, Ferrar said monitoring could be absorbed into system functionality.
"By way of comparison, banking networks provide much more complex functionality than monitoring systems, but have no place for separating network and operations functionality," he said.