GRAHAM SOULT discusses the fall and rise of bingo. Once the preserve of pensioners, it has now adapted to modern technology in order to not only survive but thrive.

OVER the last few months I’ve been travelling the country visiting bingo halls, delving into archives and interviewing industry experts to research the turbulent story of Britain’s love affair with the game.

Commercial bingo was only legalised in Britain in 1960 with the Betting and Gaming Act. The first bingo club opened on 3 January 1961 and the concept was an immediate success, with Mecca alone attracting 150,000 players a day.

By 1963 the number of bingo club members in the UK had reached an astonishing 14 million. It was the golden age of the high street bingo club and came at a fortunate time for Britain’s picture house and dance hall operators, as they were suffering declining admissions. Bingo offered them a chance to transform their fortunes.

In those early days operators often badged their bingo halls as ‘social clubs’ partly because there was still some stigma around gambling, but also because then, as now, the venues were seen as community hubs, bringing people together.

Bingo clubs were still riding high in the 1970s and more than 1,600 remained in venues across the UK by the mid-1980s. That decade also saw new innovations in the bingo industry such as the launch of the UK-wide National Bingo Game, which offered larger cash prizes than ever before.

Since the 1990s, however, bingo has faced new challenges from all directions and not always successfully.

One of the biggest was the launch of the National Lottery in 1994. Subsequently between 1995 and 2000 the number of bingo clubs across the UK fell by 21 per cent. Over time many bingo halls that were converted from old cinemas – like the Pavilion in Ferryhill, County Durham, closed, and adopted other uses, such as pubs and amusement arcades.

More recently, the UK ban on smoking in enclosed spaces had a big impact on a game where 50 per cent of players were said to smoke. Nonetheless, many would argue that the ban created a more pleasant playing environment and forced bingo hall owners to up their own game.

Still, the numbers don’t lie and bingo clubs in Britain have dropped to fewer than 400. Giants in the industry such as Mecca and Gala have had to adapt and have begun using new technology to grow bingo online. In bingo halls themselves the increasing presence of hand-held touch-screen devices, like iPads, has been challenging clubs’ old-fashioned image and succeeded in opening up the game to a new generation of players.

Right now the future of the bingo hall is looking more secure than it has for a while. In March this year following a vigorous campaign from bingo operators, George Osborne announced that tax on bingo halls’ profits would be halved from 20 per cent to 10 per cent. This brought bingo in line with bookmakers and the lottery. Evidence suggests that bingo operators are using the extra cash to invest in their facilities and keep open clubs that might otherwise have closed.

One bingo hall that has fared better than many is the Gala club in Darlington’s Skinnergate. It is unusually an early, purpose-built picture house that has remained in continual leisure use for over a century.

The premises opened as the 800-seat Arcade Cinema in August 1912 and were built and operated by the Gale & Company Ltd chain. Later, the Arcade was extended with the addition of a 500-seat balcony and by 1922 had gained a dance hall and been acquired by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres (PCT), the first national chain of cinemas in the UK.

PCT, in turn, was taken over by Gaumont in February 1929 and in 1933 the UK’s first Walt Disney ‘Mickey Mouse Club’ – a theatre-based forerunner to the TV variety show – opened at the Arcade.

On 11 August 1956, the Circuits Management Association – which had brought together the UK Odeon and Gaumont chains in 1948 under the control of The Rank Organisation – closed the Arcade Cinema, but it was immediately converted into the Majestic Ballroom, opening in October that year.

Following Rank’s entry into bingo in the early 1960s, the Majestic became a Top Rank and later an EMI Bingo Club, while still retaining the Majestic name alongside. Eventually, EMI’s clubs were acquired by Coral and then rebadged under the Gala brand.

Today, still under the Gala name, the Majestic continues to encourage people into Darlington town centre. Meanwhile, look closely at the back of the building, in Salt Yard, and you can see the lighter brickwork where its ‘Majestic’ lettering used to be.

It might look unassuming, but Darlington’s old Arcade Cinema is a building with a surprisingly rich and interesting past – and as the bingo industry continues to evolve, hopefully one with a prosperous future.

:: Graham Soult is a North East-based retail consultant and an expert on the changing high street.

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