Unlucky Bingo

In recent years the bingo community must think that the government have something against them. Firstly the smoking ban was introduced in 2007, this act stopped 8% of the total people playing bingo in the traditional halls. This figure might not seem like a great amount, but if you think that more people visit bingo halls than attend Premier Football matches each week, it starts to mount up.

Normally bingo halls have mini games which can only be played at the interval, these are called ‘table top bingo’ now these games generate massive amounts of money, sometimes as much as 45% of the total money taken from the club.

Now, with the No Smoking ban the ‘puffers’ need their nicotine craving, so they have to go out at the interval, in some bingo halls it is estimated that 40% of smokers leave for a smoke, missing some of the mini games, now this money coupled with the 8% in ticket sales, now runs into millions of pounds of lost revenue.

On 23rd of April the Chancellor did it again to the bingo community, in his budget he increased the gross profit tax on bingo from 15pc to 22pc saying this will bring in an extra £35million
to the Exchequer. To the bingo organisations this will cost them nearly £9million per year.

They are disappointed with the Chancellor as he made no indication that he was going to make this change. Gala bingo are asking people to sign a petition at their local halls and these are to be handed into the local Councillor. It will be interesting to see how many signatures are handed into the Government?