At the end of the 1980s, there basically were two major manufacturers of slot machines - International Gaming Technology (IGT) and Bally Gaming Systems. In those days there were only two places in the United States with a market for slot machines - Las Vegas and Atlantic City. That changed during the 1990s as legalized gambling spread across the country, particularly on American Indian reservations.

The boom in the market for slot machines and the need of the ailing high tech industry to find an area into which to expand saw a number of start-up companies and others appear on the scene in the 1990s, many of them foreign manufacturers moving into the market in the United States. Slot machines suddenly were a growth industry. The 21st century has seen a reversal of that trend with mergers between the industry giants and the start ups again reducing the number of slot machine manufacturers to only a few.

Players' Choices

“Simply Slots” magazine polled its readers and asked which slot machine manufacturers were their favorites. In a triumph of marketing over company identification, only 31 percent of the respondents who mentioned the name of their favorite game also mentioned the name of the manufacturer.

Of those, a whopping 76 percent mentioned IGT. Based in Reno, Nevada, the company employs nearly 5,000 people, a little more than half who work at the corporate headquarters.

The second most mentioned manufacturer was WSM Industries, more commonly know as Williams Gaming. Their name was mentioned on 17 percent of the responses. The Chicago-based company employed approximately 800 people as of the year 2000 and over the years, along with Bally, is one of the best known producers of pinball machines. These days the company specializes in reel-spinning games and video lottery terminals.

Other Top Choices

The other two most popular slot machine manufacturers, both receiving mentions 3 percent of the time, were the Australian company Aristocrat Leisure Industries and Bally Gaming. Aristocrat operates in 55 countries and is the second oldest and second largest slot machine manufacturer in the world. It employs approximately 1,300 employees. Bally is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Las Vegas-based Alliance Gaming Corporation. In years past, it was the biggest name in pinball. The company employs more than 1,500 people.

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