The most familiar tactic in negotiation is to mentally pin down what you want and then pitch for something higher.

You allow yourself to be (reluctantly) battered down until, with rueful expression and gloomy prognosis of ‘retaliation later’, you are finally resigned to accept something very close to what you were really after in the first place.

It doesn’t always work, of course, but there is a firm belief that it is a very legitimate and automatic negotiating ploy.

For those of us who have been around in this industry for more than a few years – sadly, the number seems to have been depleted rapidly of late – there is plenty of evidence to suggest that we have been the victims of the haggling philosophy outlined above on more than one occasion.

We have the current set of proposals for tax reforms upon us of course – although this time there was scant up-front discussion – and there is little doubt that talks will open before long on a number of projects, including the next round of stakes and prizes discussions in the UK. It is not so long since scares were thrown out about prize machines, threats on ticket redemption, remember the ‘teddy bear’ trading up case?

Go back a long way…. remember the threatened Ad Valorem tax? If we put our minds to it, we can probably come up with a number of industry-damaging proposals which were ‘successfully’ thwarted. But weren’t they always thwarted by concessions in other areas? Who was walking away from those talks with a quiet, satisfied smile?

It isn’t just the UK either. Various German states have unashamedly broken federal law with local regulations on arcades. Instead of running around like headless chickens, the German industry threatened to go to the European Court…most of the states have now climbed down and are talking about introducing the new regulations in 10 years’ time. The Germans, at least, know how to play the game.