Mecca Bingo are about to introduce more Costa Coffee outlets in their land based bingo halls throughout the county. Costa have already opened up five such outlets in Mecca Bingo clubs, which include one in Hamilton and Glasgow, but more are now set to open up in many more of their bingo clubs very soon. Mecca Bingo will manage the stands themselves through an agreement that has been reached with Costa owners Whitbread.

The Costa stands must have proved a success with Mecca Bingo for them to be introducing even more outlets around their bingo clubs and with times as they are at the moment I suppose they have got to look at new initiatives to improve revenues at their land based bingo halls. The rank group have just reported that their turnover for the past six months up until June is down by a massive 10% and the worst performing group out of all their divisions were their Mecca Bingo Clubs as their revenues were down 17% in the first half of this year.

The rank group have blamed the smoking ban in all public places which included bingo halls and the cut in how many £500 jackpot gaming machines their bingo halls are allowed to house on their profits tumbling. Mecca Bingo Espana, which run their chain of bingo halls throughout Spain also see a slight drop in turnover, but this was put down to strength of the Euro against the UK sterling.

There was a bit of good news on the horizon for the Rank Group however as the revenues from their online gaming site, blue square were up by 5%. Blue Square are one of the UK’s leading sports and betting online gaming sites and they cover a comprehensive range of sports which include, all domestic football, UK, Irish and USA racing to name just a few, in fact you could say that they provide one of the largest interactive online betting services in the UK. They are also leaders in their field when it comes to online casino and poker games.

It is a particularly difficult time at the moment for land based bingo halls throughout the UK as we have seen an unprecedented amount of bingo halls close down over the past year. Whenever you drive past a land based bingo hall during their session times, you can always tell that there is an interval as you will normally find lots of bingo players outside their clubs smoking, whereas before they used to site at their bingo tables and smoke whilst playing interval bingo which is called “Party Bingo” in many clubs, so the smoking ban in all public places was always going to hit the bingo industry where it hurts in the way of profits.