The summer bar season is a great season on its own, but it is also a prelude to one of the best times of the year to be a bar owner: Fall.
When the days are still hot and the leaves have not yet fallen off the trees, baseball season heats up and the NFL and college football return from their winter hibernation. The heart of the sporting calendar draws many to a local tavern, pub, bowling alley or other establishment.
This fall something new that should be of interest to every bar owner will arrive with all of that excitement, although your customers will not know or care anything about it.
In the fall, the Ohio Casino Control Commission’s (OCCC) skill-based amusement machine regulations are likely to become final and effective. Although a firm date cannot yet be known, it is estimated the OCCC’s regulations will become effective sometime between Labor Day and Halloween.
Under the OCCC’s regulations, every bar that offers its patrons skill-based amusement machines that provide winners with a voucher that can be redeemed for a gas card or other merchandise prize will have to obtain a license from OCCC for its location and at least one key employee.
While regulation does not generate the same excitement in a bar that a big game does, the benefit of this program to bar owners is that it will create an informational database on the state level that may in the future serve as the foundation for an expansion of the types and varieties of games that bar owners are permitted to offer to their patrons.
With a little patience and perhaps a bit of professional assistance, all bar owners should be able to satisfy the OCCC’s new licensing regulations and maintain the skill-based amusement machines that are a component of the relaxing and entertaining atmosphere that Ohio bar owners create for their customers on a daily basis.
