Bad Weather Boosts Online Bingo Activity

The recent snow fall in the U.K. is keeping people indoors and playing bingo online. That is great news for an otherwise slow bingo industry.

Rank Group the bingo and gaming mega firm has announced increased overall sales as a result of its new brand of casinos. The positive results are a direct contrast to the results reported in Spain and in the land based bingo halls. The company, one of the biggest operators of bingo clubs in the UK, under the brand of Mecca Bingo, and the Grosvenor Casinos said that revenues grew by 3 percent in the year 2009, with the last three month earnings showing a modest six percent increase.

Greg Johnson an analyst for Shore Capital said, “The consumer side is not bad as far as previous years are concerned when the bingo industry was hit by the smoking ban and wasn’t a growth industry. If you look historically at bingo they have seen sharp declines in spend.” Adding, “Rank has seen improvements in recent weeks and its online division has gone up.”

A declined of 9 per cent was reported by Rank’s Spanish arm, Top Rank Espana, which has 11 bingo clubs. Johnson commented, “Bingo in Spain draws ABs, rather than the Cs here. Bingo players in Spain are more likely to have a decent glass of wine rather than players, say, in Glasgow. Adding, “The Spanish economy has been hit far harder than us. While like-for-like sales are down 4 per cent over that last three months it looks worse than it is because of the movement in the euro currency.”

The company has reported a 29 percent increase in the number of people playing bingo since the start the start of the bad weather.

Wink Bingo has seen an increase in players, including many first time players. There has been more than a 50 percent increase in the number of players online participating in low cost and regular bingo games.

“With the bad weather, people seem to be looking for more ways of keeping themselves entertained indoors,” said, Marketing Director for Wink Bingo Maurice Karpes.