New Scaratings

CEO out, 3 Marcato Cap appointed to Board

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/02/buffalo- ... -year.html

These new guys didn't have good things to say about Buzztime here http://www.winningatwildwings.com/conte ... b-2017.pdf

Was it just the slide about the tablets or did it mention trivia specifically?

The main problem is the inability to order and pay on the buzztime tablets at BWW. Aroogas in PA does have the BT tablets working for those 2 items but BWW has not been able to get through the high security needed for credit cards.

There was no mention of trivia itself other than BWW's statement that they have always been known for Buzztime trivia.
BWW did a study on using the Ziosk tablet system in a few MN bars, as we read about on here not too long ago.

In that study BWW quickly saw that the Ziosk tablets were 100% worthless for trivia and saw 100% of the BT players walk out the door to not return till the test was over and BT was turned back on. So at least BWW brass knows BT is essential to their profit numbers.

However, Marcato now has 3 BWW board members and they will be all over Buzztime to get their tablets able to order and pay at BWW.

I hope we are close to seeing the ordering option, paying may take longer. I think Marcato will have enough to worry about with selling the corporate stores to the franchisees that BT tablets will be able to step up the technology needed in time to avoid being replaced by a different system at BWW.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

That lunch tablet timing thing has been long discontinued in the DC/MD area. Didn't realize it was still used anywhere. Ohh right CA is a strange bird.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

My biggest fear about the takeover at BWW is that the new management wants to turn their business model into a franchise operation. I read that they announced they wanted to make 90% of the locations franchise-owned. Would the franchisees have the option of not carrying trivia? If so, I think you can say goodbye to Buzztime. The bar I play at on Tuesday, Mad River, is considering dropping the game because it costs too much. It would mean that there are no locations in Manhattan (NY) other than two BWWs.

New manager at the BWW I was at last night and I mentioned to him most of the tablets were dog-eared and needed to be exchanged. He said it was on his list when he took over but, he was told the contract had expired and to wait because they might do a franchise wide upgrade. I thought that meant 3G tablets, but now maybe not.

Two years ago the local BWW franchise was taken over by a larger BWW franchise. One big change was installing an NCR enterprise solution and it caused havoc for several months with the Buzztime system. If the Buzztime tablet and the enterprise software aren’t compatible or one company doesn’t want to play nice with the other it may force a choice.

With Buzztime's long history of not doing things right, who expects them to meet the needs of BWW? This is probably the beginning of the end.

Well, from my seat BT NEEDS to complete the ordering and payment items to have a viable long term offering.

I'm hoping they will do it.

Buzztime just concluded their own shareholders meeting this morning.

Other than acknowledging that there were question(s) submitted in advance concerning the proxy fight/shakeup at BWW, there was no actual comment of response to it. There were zero questions submitted live in real time, and the entire call was 30 minutes total.

I'll just include here something I have assembled from the annual report. There is over 50% ownership of Buzztime now collected across 5 owners of record:

17.5% Jeff Berg, mostly via Matador/BFK. Jeff Berg is a board member and former interim CEO.
13.1% AWM Investment Company, New York City
8.6% "Sean Gordon", (zero additional information provided)
8.1% North Star Investment Management Corp., Chicago
4.4% Ram Krishnan, CEO
------
51.7%

the total number of shares outstanding for purposes of this calculation was 2,483,892.

The activist investors shortsightedly promoting franchise expansion for Buffalo Wild Wings, Mercato Group, placed three of four nominees on a board consisting of nine directors. Sally Smith's announced resignation shall take effect sometime between August and December. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Minneapolis Star Tribune business writer, Neil St Anthony, observed the shareholder's meeting was an affair so tense that the announcement of Smith's resignation was greeted with complete silence. Under her stewardship, the value of a BWW share has advanced 1400%. St Anthony thought she was worthy of an ovation, and I'm not here to quarrel.

The test of a business practice is whether it is sustainable. The selling of corporate stores to inflate short-term share prices is not a qualifier.

I've heard dire predictions of <s>Buzztime</s> NTN's impending death since the mid-90's, but somehow despite all the dunderheaded business decisions the powers that be have made over the years, the game still survives. It's the Avanti of bar games, the Bar Game That Won't Die.

However... If BWW does eventually decide to suddenly divest itself of BT, the likelihood of the business surviving more than a few months after that is practically nil and those old predictions will finally come true. Even the Avanti finally died out... around the same amount of borrowed time, too...

I think I'll have to prepare myself mentally for empty Tuesday nights soon... Might even have to re-acquaint myself with that screen over there... umm... oh, yeah, TELEVISION, that's it...

Chili's has their own tablets where you can pay at the table and reorder drinks. Chili's seems to have no problem with it.

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Middle age is when a broad mind and a slim waist exchange places.

Applebee's and Olive Garden among others also have tablets that allow ordering and paying and all have trivia on the tablets. The trivia SUCKS terribly on those systems and BWW knows it. BWW tested Ziosk trivia in Minn a while back as we saw in Gone D's thread. BWW saw how bad it was and is sticking with buzztime. End of story.

The only question is how long will it take buzztime to get the ordering/paying on tablets going at BWW as the already have at Aaroogas in PA. I hear from a BWW employee that they are getting these new 4th gen tablets late this year.

So please don't jump off any bridges yet.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

It's never too soon to panic.

Darwin.
I think.

Boy, I sure hope this new-gen tablet thing comes true... However, even with this happening, I wonder if it'll get to the point that franchisee BWW's could choose to drop BT while company stores keep it...

Meanwhile, I don't have any idea how to tell if a particular BWW is a franchise or company establishment, but I think I could make a good guess based on walking in and seeing if I can make it to the bar without slipping on the greasy floor... For example, the Daly City, CA BWW has the greasiest, slipperiest floors I've ever seen in a restaurant. Not surprisingly, the trivia system was broken the last of the two times I went in there. Probably had been broken for months... There is just barely enough recent activity on their page at BT to indicate the trivia now works, but I'll never ever go in there again despite the fact its location is quite convenient for me at times. This dump SHOULD save the money by dropping BT, and invest in a mop or two...

There is a BWW near me that is a franchise. They charge extra for celery and dipping sauce.

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Middle age is when a broad mind and a slim waist exchange places.

I guess the menu-functional tablets are a thing now...

http://www.buzztime.com/business/product/self-service-dining/?utm_source=web&utm_medium=b2cbuzztime&utm_term=organic&utm_content=selfserve-dining&utm_campaign=prodselfserve

All BWW franchise or corporate charge for celery and sauce on Mon, Wed and Thur. Those are the days when wings are super cheap so they do charge. The other days it's all included.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

There is something else bearing on this of which people should be aware. As I understand it, Apple will be bringing out iOS 11 in September, and it will be incompatible with the Playmaker app. Thus, those who play on their iPhones or iPads will have to choose whether to upgrade their iOS or play Buzztime on their device(s). Of course anyone who purchases a new iPhone or iPad after that date will have the System 11 already installed.

One of my teammates sent an email to Buzztime asking when they were planning to make an update of the Buzztime Playmaker app so it would be compatible. She received the response that Buzztime has no plans to update the app at all.

As my teammate was given no rationale for this decision, we can only guess why BT has decided to leave many app users hanging in this way. In no particular order, here are some possibilities off the top of my head:

1) They understand the issue, but think that the new functionality of the pads for ordering and paying means locations will need to have more of them, which will lessen the need for people using the app. (There are several flaws in this line of thinking, of course, but I'm trying to be as charitable as I can here).

2) The apps have never shown ads, which means BT was losing eyeballs for ads between rounds in direct proportion to the number of people using the app. Thus, they hope phasing out support of the app will make BT (marginally) more attractive to advertisers.

3) They have no one on staff who can update the app, and/or no budget to hire someone to do so.

4) They just don't care about the issue or the patrons it will inconvenience.

Of course it could be some combination of these, or something else. Regardless, consider this to be a heads-up of an impending issue starting this fall.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Thanks for the heads up. It does sound like typical buzztime getting behind in technology again. I'd say they don't want to spend the money to re do the app. I think the % is pretty low that actually play on their own devices. No one at the bars I go to do. Those places don't run out of playmakers, no big teams.

One question, how do you know IOS 11 will be incompatible with the current BT app?

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

Since I have an I-thing inflicted on e by employer fiat, I can answer that one. Any app that will be incompatible with 11 is identified in settings->general->about->applications (BTW for the techies out there, of which I am not one, the difference here is Apple's refusal to support 32 bit apps any more rather than any real technical incompatibility - it's as if a TV maker refused to show any pre-HD content). I only have 2 - the playmaker app and Google Earth. The former is useful mostly in the event of playmaker battery failure for me. However the BT live trivia event is popular where I play, and indeed the only reason the place has BT at all. Since they only have 10 tablets, many people play on phones. The Mac fanbois will soon find themselves shut out there.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Ah, thank you Rhino, I did not know about the 32 bit support ending for apple apps.

Buzztime is far from alone then in being behind in this matter.

I too have an "I thing phone" that will not be upgrading to 11 after its introduced.
I have the playmaker on it and very rearly use it. But do have plenty of other older apps that may or may not be available for IOS 11.

I will be the one who refuses to upgrade.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

Thank you, ANON and RHINO. In my Showdown group, at least half the players occasionally play on their phone apps. I need to broadcast your very helpful information.