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Yet another Bingo Hall bites the dust in Scotland and its loyal customers have been devastated by the closure.
An Edinburgh Bingo hall in West Granton, that is owned by bingo giants Gala Bingo will now close after running for just 12 years. I am sure this decision was not taken lightly by Gala Bingo, but with a reported 80% drop in players at this particular club, since the infamous smoking ban was introduced, coupled with the online bingo industry taking everyone by storm it was no wonder that this sad decision was reached on Saturday night. 8000 members use to frequent this club every week but as little as 1500 players have been now making the journey to play bingo since the smoking ban came into force.
Gala Bingo’s Manager Janet Duncan, stated that “loyal customers had been left devastated”. She said: “It's all very sad. You got to know so many faces, the regulars. For our loyal customers the news of our closure has left them devastated. What's put us out of business has certainly been the smoking ban. Also, a bus service that used to stop at our door and pull in punters from Leith and Pennywell no longer runs."
A spokeswoman for owners Gala Coral, would not comment on why this latest closure had happened but she did say that “The Smoking ban alone could not be blamed”.
I recently met up with my local Gala Bingo Club bingo caller, who is called Mike, whilst I was out shopping and we spoke about how the smoking ban had affected my local bingo club and he said “At first the smoking ban hit the club hard, but slowly the players do seem to be drifting back and last month their takings were so high they even met their Bonus”.
There does seem to be more than one factor that is now affecting the land based bingo industry as a whole, the online bingo business is still growing by the day, the double taxation the bingo industry faces from the government, put together with the smoking ban, I suppose in the end something has just got to give, at the expense of lots of loyal land based bingo players it seems.
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