Bingo halls have certainly been through some difficulties in the decade. First the opening of many online bingo sites saw many players take their game online instead of heading out to the bingo hall and then the smoking ban saw off many players who were left. With an older demographic, those bingo players are not being replaced with younger players and bingo halls have seen a huge downturn in the last ten years.
Increasingly, the UK’s bingo halls have relied on slot machines and instant win gaming machines to make up the shortfall in customers, but a massive 20% tax now levied on these machines is more bad news for bingo halls!
Last month, George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer left the levy on slots and instant win machines in place, making them subject to 20% tax, and the organisations that are already struggling with taxation are bingo halls, many of which are barely surviving already. These halls must have been hoping for a tax reduction, but instead the levy was just renamed and left in place.
Many clubs are reporting annual turnovers now of less than £75,000 a year, and these clubs are unlikely to survive this continued taxation. These clubs account for about 200 of the bingo clubs in the UK, and they could soon be going the way of 150 bingo halls that have already closed in the UK since 2005.
The online bingo game, and mobile bingo popularity is growing day by day, but the bingo halls just suffer more and this new tax is surely going to be the final nail in the coffin of many clubs around the UK who are already struggling to survive.
