New Scaratings

That is just terrible news. I hadn't got around to reading the transcript of that call yet.
This is what has sent the stock price down so fast.

The last line is quite troubling about the contract only good through 2019 for 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!!!!

Is it just me or does it seem odd that he says the contract ends in 2019, but "Buffalo Wild Wings did purchase and prepay for 10,000 of our top-of-the-line payment tablets. They have deployed some, and we expect to deploy the remaining into the stores over the next few quarters.:

That would put deployment of the new tablets into late 2019 and it would seem like a waste to deploy new tablets only to pull a few months later.

I wonder how they will pick the stores receiving the new 'top of the line' tablets? It almost seems like the 'Brand Standard' of BT at every BWW will end when the master agreement expires, but individual GM's that could justify player usage may continue into 2020?

So BWW prepaid for 10,000 tablets, they were suppose to be in stores first quarter 2018 and Buzztime can't meet their obligations.

Roark Capital has placed Arbys, BWW and Sonic in Inspire Brands. My guess is Roark is looking to IPO Inspire in a couple years and is looking to increase financial performance. Does Buzztime contribute or drag?

My gut feeling is the controlling interest in Buzztime bought their shares cheap and find it more profitable to continue milking the cow rather than investing more to fix and improve the product.

So BWW started opening their new 're-designed' stores a few weeks ago. First 2 are in New Caney TX and Bowling Green KY - it appears that neither have BT based on the sitefinder.

Apparently the 'new 4k AV system' they went with doesn't even support it. Looks like the Gaming Options will be 'Home-based XBox, Playstation and Nintendo systems instead.

https://stories.inspirebrands.com/first ... nt-design/

That redesign does leave BT out of luck. Hope the rollout of the redesigns are slow and only at corporate stores.

On a note of BWW dumping Buzztime, We at BWW Gaithersburg MD have now been without BT for 2 months. At first a new computer was going to be installed to replace the broken one. However, that was cancelled when BT told our manager the central MD BWW franchise was going to have to pay to get a new computer for our store. The franchise regional manager got involved and after talking with BT the decision was made to not get the new computer for Gaithersburg and in fact drop buzztime, eventually, from all 12 central MD BWW stores. So Gaithersburg is dead and the rest are just waiting to be cut off.

So we have been playing at BWW Urbana in Ijamsville MD (great town name for winning 2 in a row at Playback) also playing at Stained Glass Pub Glenmont MD. Both are a much longer drive for most of the regular players. BWW Urbana is in the same MD franchise so we'll see how long it stays running.

Not looking good for the future of Buzztime unless they get a real sales force of some type. Maybe BT can work a deal with a company that already has sales reps visiting bars/restaurants? Maybe InBev would like to buy BT for 2.50 a share?

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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!!!!

Maybe BT should allow home installs as they did at a few locations in the past. I have already have a site name picked out, just in case.

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

I haven't seen any official news out of BT or BWW lately, but am wondering if BWW and BT kissed and made up?

I see that the 4 'new store format' locations that BWW has been opening since late last year into this year that were not coming up on the site finder as they opened have now all been loaded under consecutive site ID's (41048 -41051) which is encouraging.

Also, I was in Maryland last week for work and the BWW Gaithersburg site that is noted above by BUD as dumping BT was not coming up when I was there in Feb last week, but seems to be producing results now in March.

On top of that, one of the local Austin BWW's I play at just got a new shipment of what appear to be the latest generation boards with EMV chip and mobile payment functionality a few weeks ago.

I know the GM of my local BT mentioned a big 'GM convention' in February where he said he would find out the future plans for BT, but I haven't seen him since - but it looks like something indeed changed recently that doesn't seem to indicate plans to phase out this year.

Bejoe, you are right Gaithersburg was fixed on Friday after 4 months of a dead computer. So they never dropped BT, just took forever to fix it. I don't now who paid for the new computer, hopefully BT did.

The last thing we heard from the manager was the BT contract which is up in Nov still might not be renewed. Hopefully they will realize the sales numbers do support BT. Shipping of new equipment does sound promising though.

So we won't be playing at the Urbana/Ijamsville BWW and not so much at Stained Glass Pub. Both of which racked up a bunch of prime time wins recently.

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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!!!!

A related issue would be whether the BWWs that have let their broken playmakers dwindle to virtually no playable units have maintained that stance. I'll check into a couple locally that have fallen into that category. Can't necessarily trust the BT activity for that as players have ceased going there, though 10 handles playing would be a good sign and save a trip.

The BWW nearest me (which we don't currently play at but probably will soon) is in progress of converting to the newest version of tablets. Their current stash has half new version of tablets and half of the (old) regular version of tablets.

The BWW we currently play at (which still has the old version of tablets) always seems to have 80% - 90% of them in use (which I guess is good for buzztime, even though a majority of them aren't being used for trivia). The remaining boards in the bins are either all off (and takes forever to get them turned on & booted up) or are broken. I saw a server get pretty PO'd when a couple at her table asked for tablets, she went through 8 of them in the bins, and couldn't get any of them to load up.

Also, the last time our full team played there, we started with 10 tablets when Playback started and finished with just 6 still working. Which is a big reason why we may be soon playing at the other BWW.

I had a chance to ask the local BWW GM about BT plans learned at the BWW 'GM Convention' that was held last week in Orlando:

BT Contract is up in the fall of this year and they have not 'officially' nixed it yet. The main sticking point is 'order and pay' functionality that BT has only been able to roll out to a few test stores. Order and pay on the tablet is a main goal of BWW and they are going to give BT a few months time to deliver on it to more locations with a concrete plan for full roll out in the near future. If they can, they will keep it. If not, they will not renew.

If not, they have plans in place for a "poker and trivia" replacement but did not know the vendor. As I was sitting and playing alone in that store at the time, I pointed out that while nobody else is playing here, I still found it fun trying to make the national boards and would not be returning to play on one of the Chili's/Red Robin/Applebees type systems that were non-networked if that is what they were going with. She said it would be networked with other BWW's and really the only difference I would notice from BT would be the inability to compete against non-BWW 'mom and pop' places and instead of Player Plus points, it would be tied into the Blazing Rewards points.

I was able to find this link of a mobile payment company that was presenting there. While their website doesn't mention trivia, I wonder if they are the ones proposing that solution?

https://corporate.freedompay.com/resour ... onvention/

Hopefully BT can deliver. That would probably insure their survival as well as mean all BWW's would be mandated the newest generation boxes with EMV and mobile payment functionality which would mean issues of BWW's with a handful of working boards would go away as well.

While their alternative sounds promising and a relief it would be one of the non-networked trivia tablets the other chains use, it would probably mean the end of BT if they only retain the 'mom and pop places'

https://www.marketwatch.com/press-relea ... 2019-03-06

The March 20th Buzztime conference call may give some indication of what is happening.

What peaked my interest in the release is the statement "The Buzztime platform has also been recently resold and the content licensed for other businesses serving other markets."

I have seen that "Buzztime platform has been resold" statement in press releases since the April 30 2018 release. I don't think it's as ominous as it sounds. I think it's just other uses of the the BT hardware platform. (the tablets)
From the April 30 release, "As announced previously, we began selling both our hardware platform and our gaming services and have secured our first large win"

Possibly the car dealerships and retirement homes that have been mentioned may be using the BT hardware for who knows what in addition to the games.

However, BT is up for sale and we'll see what is said on the 20th. I plan to be on the call as a shareholder.

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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!!!!

I was on the BT call today, there was no mention of BWW other than to say they are working on improving the situation with them.

I intended to ask a question or 2 about the BWW contract renewal situation but was not given the chance to ask a question. I did press *1 to ask a question but they ignored me, possibly because I wasn't with an Investment brokerage company. There was only 1 stupid question asked about frequency of something.

I'll put what else I remember in a different Q4 BT call thread. Lots of good stuff, many new platforms coming.

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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!!!!

We were talking with the manager of the BWW in Willowbrook, Illinois last night. He said that he can't get Buzztime out to maintain the boards. The boards don't hold a charge, take forever to get minimal charges, and the batteries are swelling so badly that the plastic is breaking (think old cell phones before memory free batteries). He said that there is some kind of battle going on between the corporate entities (which is what is being discussed here).

FWIW, I emailed Buzztime this morning expressing my concerns about the board conditions. Originally I thought it was some of the dopes at BWW not knowing that they needed to charge these things up. I'm glad I spoke with him last night.

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Malort. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Several posters on BadBart are reporting that BWW’s contract with Buzztime is indeed ending in November. Is anyone else able to confirm?

The people on badbart are mostly the same people on here. You won’t find anything different by reading this whole thread.

Short recap: Yes, many Bww managers across the country have told players the contract is up for negotiations. Some Bww have already pulled the plug because of many bad tablets.

A new contract could very well be worked out by November. The current contract does end in November. There is speculation that individual Bww franchises can negotiate to keep BT if they wish to. Our MD franchise is saying they are trying to keep BT in a few of their 15 locations if it can be worked out??

The corporate locations are all be lumped together so they are more likely to be in trouble.

We will see come Nov. nothing can be confirmed till then.

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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!!!!

I do realize that this isn’t new; however, based on the tone of the post and comments, this seems to be more concrete than what we’ve been hearing. My apologies if that is not the case.

How can they have trouble fixing boxes? They only have a small fraction still playing. I play twice a year and the last time I went through 6 boxes in 5 hours. I can’t even log in with my main handle anymore, but FBZZTM still works..

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

Hey Bobby, nice to see you pop up. What's going on in Vegas keeping you busy?

The deal with BWW and the tablets (at least in MD at franchise stores) is that they now have to go through a 3rd party refurbisher to send in tablets and get refurbished ones back. Buzztime is not doing this anymore for BWW. There is a unknown high cost per tablet so most BWW are not sending bad tablets in. Our BWW did send some in a year or so ago, came back very quick but was alot of $$. Not sure how or when that was added to the contract?? Maybe instead of a scheduled price hike that BWW balked at?

Say Hi to Julia from all of us in Gaithersburg.

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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!!!!

Good to hear from Lewser in mid season form (and speaking truth-I have given up on one local BW (Homewood) but Tinley Park has good boards (mostly).

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Merkin

My buddies STEVE, JAKE and I tried to play a couple of Sundays ago at a bar in town called Gatsby's.
They had ten controllers first thing at noon. All had been charging overnight and, judging by the monthly leader board, hadn't been used for two days.
Four of them held a charge for 30 minutes.
Four more lasted roughly an hour.
The last two holdouts almost made it to 2 PM.
We didn't make it past Lunchtime games.

These new boards are an unmitigated disaster.
But, hey, at least BT's stockpiling a bunch of worthless email addresses...
And you can't put a price on that!

(unless you include thousands of missing bar tabs...)

Certainly,this is not new.The boxes at BWW and several other places are not holding their charge.I was told once they are suppose to last 24 hours.Is it the boxes or the charger at fault.Yesterday at a BWW,they have 20 boxes in the rack but alot of them say Buzztime on front and they do not function.The one's we used worked but not as long as in the past.Having equipment that works is a prerequisite for a more successful business environment.

We have good luck with the ones at BWW, Irvine, CA. the ones that work do hold a good charge for at least 4 hours.

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

The local bw3 manager seems to be aware of this November date, and when they told me about it I immediately came here to confirm.

This kinda stinks. There are no local places to play if bw3 drops NTN - there is a place about 20 minutes away but it's not the same.

I know I will not frequent the local bw3 any more if they drop trivia, there's just no reason to. (we usually go every other weekend)

I'm hoping NTN and bw3 kiss and make up.

I'll be watching this thread with interest.