St. Stephens Bingo Hall to close - Online Bingo News

The Gala Bingo club in St. Stephen’s shopping centre, one of the group's larger bingo halls is to shut down. Staff were informed of the decision and the future of 33 members of staff is at risk. Staff and management of the St. Stephen’s bingo club will be in consultation over the next few days.

Sarah Mercer, group Communications Manager at Gala Bingo said, "We are in a consultation period with our staff with a view to closing the bingo club, which will last four weeks. Since we opened there has been a number of factors working against us such as the recession, the smoking ban and the restrictions on gaming machines within our clubs. Gaming tax was increased to 22 per cent, which has also not helped. The club has suffered and is not trading as well as we had hoped. We will be looking to try and employ the staff within the group." 

Clearly, the current economic scenario and the additional burdens of increased tax and low customer turnout due to the smoking ban have hit the UK bingo industry extremely hard. Even major bingo operators like Gala are announcing closures of their bingo halls every few days.

The St. Stephen’s bingo venue has a capacity of 1,000 players and is one of the largest Gala Bingo halls. This bingo hall has been in operation for barely two years and is already bowing out due to insufficient business revenues.

Gala Bingo recently announced the closure of 5 of its bingo halls, of which the St. Stephen’s shopping centre bingo club in Hull is one. This move is being taken with a view to economise and to cull some of the less profitable bingo venues and consequently improve the group’s finances as a whole.

Written by Rhea Williams for Bingostreet – your daily resource for bingo news and events in the world of online bingo UK.