Bally

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This article is about the Bally company, a manufacturer of slot machines and pinball machines. For other uses, see Bally (disambiguation).

Image:BallyTechBig.gif Image:Ballypinballnew.gif Bally Technologies, Inc. (originally the Bally Manufacturing Corporation) is an American corporation. The company has existed for more than 70 years with a complex history of re-organizations, mergers, and divestitures; it had roots as an early and successful maker of pinball games and slot machines, and was later associated with both the health club and gambling industries.

1 History
2 Notable pinballs using the Bally brand
3 Notable slot machines
4 External links

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History

The Bally Manufacturing Corporation was founded by Raymond Moloney on January 10, 1932 when Bally's original parent company, Lion Manufacturing, established the company to make pinball games. The company took its name from its first, highly successful, game, dubbed Ballyhoo. The company, based in Chicago, quickly became a leading maker of the popular games.

In the late 1930s, Moloney decided to begin making gambling equipment, and had great success developing and improving the modern mechanical slot machines that formed the backbone of the nascent gaming industry.

After a wartime foray into manufacturing munitions and airplane parts, Bally Manufacturing continued to produce innovations in both pinball and slot machines through the late 1950s, and also designed and manufactured vending machines and established a coffee vending service. Ray Moloney died in 1958 and the company foundered briefly; amid the financial failure of parent company Lions Manufacturing Bally was bought out by a group of investors in 1963. Through the 1960s Bally continued to dominate the slot machine industry, cornering over 90% of the worldwide marked for the machines by the end of the decade.

In the late 1960s, Bally became a publicly-traded company and went on an acquisition spree, buying several companies including a German game company and Midway Manufacturing, an amusement game company from Illinois who made coin-operated electromechanical devices such as puck bowling games. In the 1970s and early 1980s Midway would become a primary source of income for Bally as it became an early arcade video game maker and obtained the licenses for two of the most popular videogames of all time, Space Invaders and Pac-Man.

In the late 1970s, Bally made an unsuccessful attempt at getting into the casino business as New Jersey legalized gambling in Atlantic City; this effort was thwarted when the company was unable to attain a permanent license for the completed casino.

By the mid-1980s, the company again was flush with cash and management envisioned re-defining the manufacturing business as a far-flung leisure industry giant. The company began buying other businesses including the Six Flags amusement park chain, the Health and Tennis Club exercise chain and a maker of exercise equipment. The company also tried to enter the restaurant business with a hybrid restaurant/arcade called TomFoolery, a predecessor to places like Dave and Buster's.

The company also was finally successful in purchasing several casinos, including the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and the Golden Nugget Atlantic City. This buying spree quickly took its toll on the company finances, however, and Bally was soon forced to sell off several divisions, including Six Flags and Bally-Midway. The pinball division, along with Midway, was acquired by Williams Electronics in 1988. The Aladdin's Castle chain of game arcades was sold to Namco in 1993, and was renamed Namco Cybertainment, Inc.

In 1990 the struggling company was taken over by financier Arthur Goldberg who re-christened it Bally Entertainment Corporation and focused on the health club business and spun off the manufacturing-related parts of the company as a separate division. By 1992 the manufacturing division, Bally Gaming International had merged with Alliance Gaming becoming a subsidiary of Alliance, had been completely divested from the parent company (licensing back the Bally name). Bally Gaming International had three divisions, Bally Gaming (slot manufacturing), Bally systems (slot accounting and management) and Bally Wulff (wall machines).

The health-club divisions of the company would go by the name Bally Health and Tennis and later Bally Total Fitness. Many casinos worldwide would take on the Bally name in the maze of ownership and licensing agreements typical of that business. Midway would continue to use the Bally name for its pinball games, until WMS Industries (the parent company of Williams) ceased pinball production in 1999.

In 1995 Bally Entertainment Corporation was purchased by Hilton Hotels Corporation, later the casino resorts division of Hilton Hotels became Park Place Entertainment.

On March 31, 2005, WMS Industries struck a deal with Australian company The Pinball Factory to give them a license for the intellectual properties and the rights to re-manufacture former Bally/Williams games in the field of mechanical pinball. In addition, The Pinball Factory also has bought the right to manufacture new games using his company's new hardware system under the Bally brand.

On March 6, 2006, the company announced that its shareholders approved a name change to Bally Technologies, Inc. Company shares will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BYI as early as March 13, 2006.

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Notable pinballs using the Bally brand

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Distributed by Bally

Ballyhoo (flipperless) (1932)
Ballyhoo (flippers) (1947)
Boomerang (1974)
Capersville (1967)
Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy (1976)
Dogies (1968)
Eight Ball (1977)
Evel Knievel (1977)
Fireball (1972)
Fireball II (1977)
Four Million B.C. (1971)
KISS (1979)
Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man (1982)
Playboy (1978)
Sky Divers (1964)
The Six Million Dollar Man (1978)
Wizard! (1975)
Xenon (1980; features music and voices by electronic music composer Suzanne Ciani)