Welsh Ban Hits Hard

It has been less than four weeks since the smoking ban came into force in Wales, but already some bingo clubs in the country are beginning to suffer. The Llanelli Star newspaper recently highlighted the case of the Argos Bingo Club in Market Street, Llanelli, which is already having difficulties paying the high revenue tax that is demanded of bingo halls. Nigel Griffiths, who runs the Argos, fears that the smoking ban will only put more pressure on his already struggling business.

Mr Griffiths recently organised a Stop Destroying My Bingo petition in his club, and an impressive 520 signatures were collected from 1,000 regular visitors. “We are hoping the Government will take notice of our petition and do something to stop bingo halls across the country having to close,” Mr Griffiths told the Llanelli Star.

And he isn’t the only person with that sentiment. The Bingo Association, which launched the “Stop Destroying My Bingo” national petition at the beginning of March, is hoping that delivery of signatures from all over the country to Downing Street will encourage someone, somewhere to pause long enough to think rationally about the impact that poorly considered legislation will have on the bingo industry.

The Bingo Association has 109 proprietors in membership and between them they operate 548 bingo clubs. The membership list includes very large operators such as Gala and Mecca right down to very small single-club operators, so it really does represent a genuine cross-section of the entire bingo industry. When the Bingo Association says that everyone is bingo is concerned about the direction that the game is taking in the UK, they mean it.

Scotland has been living with the smoking ban since 26 March, 2006, and the bingo industry has suffered in a major way. The first club to close was in Gordon Brown’s own constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, and it was hoped that this might encourage the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give bingo some much-needed tax breaks. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen, and since the introduction of the ban just over a year ago clubs have lost ten per cent of their smoking players, sending revenues plummeting and causing many clubs to close completely.

Now the same smoking ban is making its devastating effects known across Wales, and from July 1, 2007, bingo clubs in England will suffer the same fate. The only silver lining in this cloud of crippling legislation is that bingo players have the option of playing online if their own local club becomes one of the casualties.

22nd January 2008