The Rank Group, one of the biggest land based bingo operators and owner of Mecca Bingo have pinned their hopes on a completely new generation of bingo clubs as a means of turning it’s current dwindling levels of customership. The company said that it’s intentions for the land based arm of the Mecca Bingo brand will focus on new-style clubs, typified by the opening of its first ‘Full House’ club which opened in Beeston, Nottinghamshire in May.
Since it’s opening, the club is now attracting around 4,500 visits a week, due to a repositioning of the game of bingo in locals hearts and minds. Mecca Bingo’s desire to attract a younger, wealthier audience has been reflected in state of the art features and brand new games at the club, including even late night “Bin-glo” club nights to tempt local students from the nearby University of Nottingham.
The 4,500 visits to the Beeston out-trump the average weekly attendance of its other 103 clubs across the UK. It’s more traditional outlets are in stark contrast totalling around 3,000 average weekly visits. The roaring success of the Beeston Mecca Bingo was even reflected when employees of a rival Gala Bingo club were found visiting the new club a few months ago!
As a result, Mecca Bingo have announced that they will be relaunching another club in Catford, West London under the Full House branding in December, with plans for conversions on three further sites due next year, at a cost of around £1.5m for each.
Although it is a big investment, Rank Group chairman Ian Burke seems keen to move forward. Whilst the Gala group are sticking with the more traditional view of the bingo hall, Mecca seem intent on revolutionising the concept in order to stay afloat in increasingly fraught conditions for the land based bingo industry.
In a recent article, Burke said ‘That’s the key part of our design. If you want to play bingo in the traditional way, you can, but if you want to come in with a group of friends and not be told to be quiet then you also can – we encourage people to make a noise.’
‘We’ve taken some market share from our competitors here, but we’re also growing the local market.’
However, Neil Goulden, boss of arch-rival Gala Coral, has dismissed Mecca’s efforts as ‘middle-class people telling working class people how they should play bingo – customers don’t want that sort of thing’.
But Burke was adament that Mecca wanted to be ‘…the leading, not the biggest. Clearly this concept is quite different from anything else in the industry. According to our focus group, customers are delighted with it.’
Mecca has been hit by the smoking ban, gambling legislation and an unexpected tax hike from the Treasury but seems to have reached a more stable financial condition in the last 6 months, no doubt boosted by the success of it’s Nottingham branch. Its most recent results produced its first like-for-like revenues growth in more than two years in the 14 weeks to October 4. However, the company is still blighted by a 3% decline in customer levels, meaning the coming months will still pose a challenge to the group, especially when new taxation rates come in, hiking duty paid by bingo operators to 22%, a prospect Burke is understandably stony-faced about.
We think given the ever-evolving bingo market thanks to the emergence of online bingo, that it is about high time the land based bingo industry wakes up to the needs of a ever diversifying bingo audience, and await to see if Burke’s gamble will pay off.
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