Bureaucrats Take Aim at Bingo Halls
Friday, 22 March 2013 | Written by Carol Dian
Bingo halls have probably never been more discussed within the media than in the past couple of years. Primarily this is because a significant number of halls have been forced into closure due to economic pressure from increased taxation on revenues. At present, the climate is one where only the nationwide chains like Gala and Mecca seem to be thriving, which is greatly disappointing for the industry. In March, bingo halls have again come in the firing line of bureaucrats and there is every indication that more doom and gloom will be coming.
The UK Government previously imposed a 20 per cent tax rate on bingo halls that is above the 15 per cent subjected to all other forms of gambling in the country. Bing operators have been complaining about the disparity for a few years now and have voiced their struggles in various media sources. It has been a difficult landscape that has forced over 150 halls to close during that time. Now it appears that that amount could double after the government recently set its sights on squeezing operators further. The chancellor, George Osborne, has introduced a slot machine duty of 20 per cent that will significantly eat into the revenues of bingo halls.
It is predicted that the chancellor’s new slot duty will take away approximately £9 million from industry coffers annually. This will be notable loss of revenue as the industry has already suffered through a major decline in profits. It is estimated that between 2006 and 2013, bingo profits have decreased from around £250 million to approximately £125 million. To give you an idea of the scale of the industry, more than 13,000 people are employed by bingo halls throughout the UK. Players have been migrating away from halls also, presumably to online bingo. Approximately three million people now play bingo each year in halls when this figure used to be up at around six million in 2006.
As if operators didn’t have enough to worry about after the bleak news from the 2013 budget, now there is another hurdle. Eastlands Homes is one of the largest housing associations in England and it recently sent a newsletter to its residents to express a number of concerns. The gist of the newsletter was that the association attempted to point out that its residents couldn’t afford non-essentials. Chief among the ‘non-essentials’ outlined by Eastlands was playing bingo, which seems like an unfair recommendation when you consider that Sky TV was also on the list.
It costs a lot less to attend a couple of night at a bingo hall than it does to have an expensive Sky TV subscription, making it unfair of the association to list bingo. The newsletter then went on to state that people should cut out those non-essentials from their spending if they wanted to keep their homes. It could be worrying trend for operators if more housing associations in the UK attempt to make a similar warning to their residents.
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