There’s been movement in the retail bingo over the last couple of years that the site here fell quiet, and I’ve spotted a number of clubs in our club finder who’ve changed hands / owners whilst checking through. As there’s no central place to check on who runs which bingo clubs here in the UK, it’s only possible to keep up with these changes via various news stories and alerts. So to my surprise, here’s news of a new UK bingo operator that sounds like it means business in the UK’s retail bingo land.
I had not previously heard of Marwyn Gaming Limited, but according to reports, they have just bought three bingo clubs. These halls are based at Redcar, Margate and Ilkeston (I’m aware, two of those three aren’t listed in our club finder, we’ll do some looking.) This brings their number of clubs up to nine, according to the article.
Now, the world of corporate take overs and conglomerates and shares and all that jazz is not one that I’m familiar with really, so I’m trying to piece together what the other clubs MGL owns are. From what the internet tells me, the other six clubs would be those under the Beacon banner. From what I can see, Marwyn Management Partners, of which MGL is a wholly-owned subsidiary, became the owner of Praesepe Plc back in mid 2011. Previous to that, Praesepe Plc had taken over Beacon Entertainments in 2010.
Looking into Marwyn Gaming Ltd and Praesepe Plc, they would seem to have some interesting ideas about managing their bingo interests. To quote from the Praesepe plc site, the company has faith in the UK’s retail bingo market and some interesting plans for developing in the area.
“There remain a number of smaller chains of Bingo Clubs which would benefit from consolidation into a larger group. Praesepe management also believe that, given the correct levels of capital expenditure and management expertise together with the introduction of some of the new technology that is starting to permeate into the industry, UK bingo has a strong future. With an ageing population bingo clubs provide all the facilities that the over 50s look for, are good value for money and will only increase in popularity. Praesepe also believes that Bingo clubs will provide an ideal opportunity to move some on-line brands to an off-line business, as opposed to the received wisdom that brands will only move the other way.”
My interest was particularly piqued by that final sentence about moving online business into retail bingo, which to me makes perfect sense. I can’t recall if we reported on it at the time, but a couple of years back Foxy Bingo reported it was to open its own bingo hall. I was disappointed to find out that this was an April’s Fool, as it made perfect sense to me for them to make such a move, given their exposure and familiarity here in the UK. If Praesepe carry out these plans, it will be interesting to see which online brands are brought to the retail world. Time will tell…
Otherwise, the news of these club purchases shines a positive light on the future of the game in the UK. Despite gloomy economic forecasts and taxation issues, this company sees that low stakes, good value, good old-fashioned bingo has the potential for growth. Having not heard of Marwyn before today, they are now firmly on my radar and I will be watching their progress and developments with interest.
