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Slot Manufacturer Profile: Bally Gaming    (Part 2)

By the end of the decade, Bally had expanded its manufacturing to include slot machines for the very first time. The company was a groundbreaker in the field of mechanical slot games. Their first footsteps into the field came just before these gambling devices exploded in popularity during the 1950s. By the middle of the nineteenth century, fruit machines had attained their current status as the star attractions on casino gaming floors, earning as much as seventy percent of the income for gaming establishments. Bally was right there on the forefront of the trend.

It would seem that the story of Bally and its slot machines was nothing but a rosy American success story, but that simply was not the case. The company’s eventual spot on top of the United States’ gambling industry seemed like a distant and unrealistic dream in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which saw dark days for Bally. Lion Manufacturing, which still owned and operated Bally, entered a prolonged state of financial decline that ultimately led to its obliteration. Of course, their parent company’s troubles could not help but affect Bally. Compounding the disaster was the death of Bally’s founder, Ray Maloney, in 1958. Maloney had been a key figure in Bally’s early success, and his demise ushered in a period of plummeting revenues and market share. On its last legs, Lion manufacturing sold Bally to an outside investment group. This was the end of Lion, but the start of a bright new era for the slot machine company.

Continue to part 3 here.

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