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Saturday, 31 May 2008

Gala pull out of national bingo game this september

Well as promised this month is all about the national game. As you may have read, Gala have recently announced that they will be withdrawing from the National bingo game on the 31st of August and replacing this huge game with a new and improved in house link game (the Hi Five).

In a statement Gala felt that: 'With 2 national jackpot games now in place alongside each other, it clearly made sense to review our position. Our customers consistently tell us that they love our High 5 game since it gives them more chances to win great prize money. We now want to focus exclusively on High 5' I can understand where this is coming from and I sort of agree. The Hi five game gives you a chance not only to win a huge prize, but it also gives the chance for everyone playing that game in that specific club to all share in that jackpot prize! If your club wins the jackpot of £1million lets say; the winning ticket holder receives half of that and the rest of the ticket holders in the club share the other half. This could mean that on any session, ANY player in a bingo club could walk away with literally thousands of pounds and in today's climate that is a very attractive incentive for a punter to prefer one bingo club over another.

Now there's the big Gala plug over, now for the nitty gritty of it all! We all know that bingo is in an unhappy place at the moment. Gaming restrictions and taxes and the smoking ban have all meant that the bingo industry is trying even harder to recoup the lost revenue and customers. I think we are getting to the stage where the bingo clubs are deciding to think about there own interests and making sure that they are going to be OK above everything else. Self preservation seems to be the key word here from the big boys in the bingo world. The people that may suffer from this in the long run though are the smaller bingo companies and independents. With Mecca and Gala dominating the marketplace with their huge jackpot prizes on offer the smaller bingo clubs may go the same way that the corner shops and retailers did when huge multi-purpose supermarkets appeared outside every town and city! Especially if come September the National game prize money suffers from Gala's absence.

I have heard from managerial figures in Gala clubs that the National game was not making any profit for the clubs. Most of the money went back on the prize board (and the jackpot prize) and any remaining would go to the national game and the government. I have even heard reports that some customers are opting out of the national game so that they can have an extra 5minutes of smoking time outside before the second half begins! (this does not surprise me from the 'professional smokers' that frequent the bingo!)

But what I am worried about more than anything from a callers point of view is that now Gala callers will be ineligible for the NBGA bingo caller of the year competition. To be an entrant for the COTY you need to be calling in a bingo club that calls the National game: so potentially every Gala caller that has entered this year will not be able to take part! This is a big hit to the competition. The one thing that I was proud of when I won the title in 2006 is that I was the 'best' caller in the whole industry: out of over 600 clubs (at the time!) I was top of the pile. Will this years champion feel the same way when over a third of the bingo callers cannot take part?

In conclusion I have a funny feeling that this is not the end of this story. Do you know all about chaos theory? Basically, a butterfly flaps its wings in Sidcup and a tornado blows through Florida (bizarre I know!) I think Gala have just flapped their wings! Keep watching this blog............

Posted by Brett at 12:30 |

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