Street operators battle over skill games

The US state of Virginia is seeing a rash of legal actions over skill-based games in convenience stores.

Virginia has loosened its restrictions on gambling and now the skill games – which look very like slots – are appearing in convenience stores that are happy to have them to help recover from the pandemic impact, reports the Virginia Mercury.

The stores are in profit-sharing arrangements with companies like Queen of Virginia, but that company has now filed nearly 150 breach-of-contract lawsuits against the store owners.

The largely-similar legal actions concern allegations that the stores had removed the company’s games and replaced them with those of a rival operator.

The non-competition clause in contracts, says the company, have been breached. Queen of Virginia’s parent company is Pace-O-Matic of Georgia, a leading skill games provider.