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Rank Dumps Plans to Lure Younger Bingo Players

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UK bingo giant Mecca, owned by Rank Group, has abandoned plans to revamp all of the company’s bingo halls. A program was launched four years ago and was designed to attract younger players. Rank admitted the results were disappointing. The “Full House” program was Rank’s attempt to lure a new and wealthier audience to the company’s bingo halls after Mecca was hit by the national smoking ban and new gambling legislation. The program has failed to stem the decline in player numbers. Mecca’s year on year revenues fell by 3% this year.

Rank said its investments in the company’s bingo halls had not paid off. Rank spent about £700,000 each to revamp bingo halls in Hartlepool and Knotty Ash, Liverpool during the past year. Rank said the halls outperformed their unchanged bingo halls. In a statement the Rank Group said “However, the Full House Destination estate performance as a whole has been disappointing and the capital invested has not improved the public’s perception of bingo sufficiently to address the general decline in admissions. Due to the inadequate return on investment from these conversions the group will not be committing to any further at this present time. The group does though remain committed to finding new ways to develop the venues experience across the entire estate.”

Since they were launched in 2009 Rank has opened nine full house bingo halls. The company operates a total of 97 Mecca bingo halls. Rank, which also operates Grosvenor Casinos, saw pretax profits fall by 1% to £65.1 million. The company had warned that the bad weather had an impact and reduced customer spending. The recent heat wave has not helped matters and Rank said like-for-like revenues were down since the end of June. Rank is the UK’s biggest casino operator. The company operates 55 venues and acquired 19 from Gala earlier in the year.

Revenues for Grosvenor casinos were up 5% and operating profits, excluding the new venues, were up 9%. Player visits were up and customer spending increased 7%. The profits were driven by high rollers playing at the company’s casinos in London. Customer numbers increased by only 0.3% to 958,000.The rise was due to an increase in the number of players under 35. Mecca changed bingo session times which had not been changed since the 1960′s. Rank’s Chief executive Ian Burke stated “Despite the tough economic environment and the competitive market in which we operate the group has delivered a solid set of results. The recent hot weather has adversely impacted trading in the first weeks of the new financial year. However we remain confident in the group’s long-term prospects.”

The post Rank Dumps Plans to Lure Younger Bingo Players appeared first on bingointernet.org.


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