Adult Gaming Centres

Head to the right sort of town or city centre in the UK and you’ll no doubt come across an adult gaming centre or seven. Given names such as ‘Cashino’ or ‘Slots Of Fun’, they promise visitors a wealth of casino-style games, predominantly made up of slot machines. You can occasionally play arcade type games in some of them, but that’s not what we’re interested in here.

Unlike, say, amusement arcades, there is a limit on the age of people who are allowed to enter adult gaming centres. They are strictly for people aged eighteen and over because they are dedicated to gambling machines, which is how you can tell them apart from standard arcades that younger people are allowed into in order to play the games that aren’t gambling focussed.

What Are Adult Gaming Centres

Amusement arcades are often large spaces that have been converted to contain a huge number of games machines. Adult gaming centres, in contrast, are often about the size of a standard shop and contain row after row of slot-style machines. They often promise a mix of modern, computerised gaming machines as well as older fruit machines.

On top of the slot machines there are often automatic roulette offerings, as well as bingo in certain venues. Adult gaming centres are usually made out to be pleasant and welcoming places in order to entice you in, with refreshments sometimes available for players for free as long as they’re using the machines.

Examples Of The Games You’ll Find

The best adult gaming centres are forever updating their games machines, ensuring that the very best ones are on offer to punters. The computerised nature of the modern machines means that they can be updated relatively easily. They also have the ability to offer more than one slot game on each machine, should you be the sort of person who likes to mix up their play.

Here’s a look at some of the titles that you can expect to find if you pay a visit to an adult gaming centre:

• Rainbow Riches: Leprechaun’s Gold
• Spartacus: Gladiator Of Rome
• Thai Flower
• Luck Of The Irish
• Fishin’ Frenzy
• Centurion: Maximus Winnus
• Pole Star
• Gold Cash
• Hot Sync
• Snake, Rattle & Roll

As mentioned elsewhere, there are often computerised roulette games that you can get involved with. Many adult gaming centres will have a number of different roulette offerings in order to cater to as many people as possible. There are also usually computerised bingo options available, too.

All of the major games makers that you might know from the online sites, such as Astra, Novomatic and Barcrest, tend to have created games that will work on the machines that you’d locate in an adult gaming centre. If you’ve found a game that you enjoy on an online casino then there’s a decent chance that you’ll be able to find it in an adult gaming centre.

Licensing Adult Gaming Centres

According to the UK Gambling Commission, an adult gaming centre can offer an unlimited number of gaming machines that fit into categories C and D, as well as up to 20% of the total number of games being from category B3 or B4. This is what means that the premises is limited to people aged eighteen and over.

In order to run an adult gaming centre a person or company must ensure that they have a licence from the UKGC. This is not the case of they only want to offer bingo gaming or machines that offer a prize that is less than or equal to the amount paid to play it in the first place. Sometimes a permit from the local licensing authority will suffice.

Again, though, they’re not the sort of premises that we’re looking at here. The sort of venues that we’re concentrating on are those that not only require a premises licence from the local licensing authority but also a general operating licence from the Gambling Commission. This is what allowed them to offer machines from categories B, C and D.

Protecting Youth

A key part of the licence for adult gaming centres is the promise to protect young people, particularly children. That’s why no one under the age of eighteen is allowed to enter one of the venues. The inviting, permitting or causing of a child or person below eighteen to come into an AGC can result in an offence for the licensee.

One of the things that the Gambling Commission draws attention to is the location of the entrance of a gaming centre. They point out that companies or people hoping to operate one would do well to mindful of its entrance and how younger people can be dissuaded from trying to get into one.

Mandatory Conditions Of A Licence

There are certain conditions for having a licence to run an adult gaming centre that are mandatory. The best example of this is that they must display a sign in a prominent position at the venue’s entrance making clear that entrance is not permitted to anyone under the age of eighteen.

Another mandatory condition is that there should be no direct access between an adult gaming centre and any other premises that is licensed under the Gambling Act. Interestingly, what specifically ‘direct access’ means is not outlined by the Gambling Commission.

If an AGC has a cash machine then it needs to be located somewhere that forces the person who wants to use it to stop gambling in order to do so. In other words, it can’t be located within easy reach of one of the slot machines.

The final mandatory condition is that the consumption of alcohol on the premises is forbidden at any time it’s possible to gamble. This is another thing that needs to be displayed prominently at the entrance. As another licence would be needed to serve alcohol, owners are unlikely to mind this condition too much.