Slot route operator.

A Slot route operator is a company that owns and operates slot machines in several locations. By providing this service, many small businesses are able to provide slot machines that they could not otherwise afford to operate.

As operators have grown, they have been able to offer linked machines to provide larger jackpots, and affinity cards to reward frequent players.

Operators are generally licensed in the same manner as a casino. In Nevada, they are licensed and regulated by the Nevada Gaming Commission.

In the United States, slot routes are currently operated in Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Oregon and Illinois.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_route_operator

The planned acquisition of rival slot route operator Century Gaming gives Accel Entertainment a foothold in Nevada and Montana, two of the nation’s legacy distributed gaming markets.

But the deal could spur Illinois-based Accel’s move into other states with slot route businesses and potential markets where legalizing machine gambling is under consideration by lawmakers.

In a deal announced March 2, Accel Entertainment said it would pay $140 million to acquire Century Gaming, which operates some 8,500 slot machine terminals in more than 900 locations in Nevada and Montana. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

https://cdcgaming.com/slot-machine-route-business-draws-atte...

The individual slot route operators appear to conduct themselves in a non competitive manner by differentiating their respective products. Each firm in the industry established their own niche either through product or service differentiation.

Firms in concentrated industries tend to earn monopoly profits. Yet, using Tobin's q and Jensen's coefficient, we show that Nevada's slot route firms did not earn excess profits, despite the high degree of industrial concentration.

https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

I have a low confidence level because I'd never heard of the term until today.

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Note added at 49 mins (2024-01-23 22:49:49 GMT)
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Here they're called 'route operators'.

Route operators have taken the Puerto Rico Gaming Commission (CJPR) to court, alleging that the license renewal process has generated “administrative chaos.”

The 16 plaintiffs demand that “all procedures related to (the) collection and renewal of licenses for route operators gaming machines” be suspended, in relation to the process that had a deadline of September 30. The plaintiffs state that the commission lacks personnel, has failed to carry out inspections and had been acting inefficiently.

https://g3newswire.com/puerto-rico-route-operators-take-gami...

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Note added at 50 mins (2024-01-23 22:51:28 GMT)
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This is not the first time the Fiscal Oversight Board has been at odds with slot machine plans in Puerto Rico. The Union of Route Machine Operators (UNOMAR) took issue with other proposed changes earlier this year, which had also not been approved by the FOB.

https://www.online-casinos.com/news/industry/slot-machine-in...

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Note added at 1 hr (2024-01-23 23:55:28 GMT)
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The largest casino slot floor in the U.S. is at Oklahoma’s

WinStar World, which offers 8,500 machines. Golden Entertainment operates well more than that outside of casinos.

“Distributed gaming” is the industry term for route operations, which in Golden’s case, amounts to nearly 11,000 machines across Nevada and Montana.

Route operators have the unique task of managing, marketing and operating slot machines not in one room, but in hundreds of rooms at once, spread across a given state, under the identifier “video gaming terminals” or VGTs, or in some cases, “video lottery terminals” or VLTs.

In the case of Golden Entertainment, one of the largest distributed gaming operators in the U.S., those locations in Nevada consist of 65 wholly owned taverns under PT’s Entertainment Group in addition to around 700 convenience stores, truck stops and grocery stores. The company’s Montana division consists of a network of nearly 3,000 games in 300 locations.

https://ggbmagazine.com/article/route-to-success/