Chain: Buzz Bingo (Lost Halls)
As one of the UK’s largest bingo operators, Buzz Bingo has also seen a significant number of closures across its estate since the Gala rebrand in 2018, reflecting wider pressures across the retail bingo sector.
The most substantial wave came in July 2020, when Buzz Bingo announced the permanent closure of 26 halls across the UK, with the potential loss of 573 jobs, as the chain dealt with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on in-person entertainment venues. Employee numbers fell sharply as a result, dropping from a pre-pandemic figure of 3,400 to 2,184 by the time the company reported its 2023 results.
Further closures followed in 2023, when Buzz Bingo announced it would shut nine of its clubs, citing a challenging operating environment shaped by changing customer behaviour, rising living costs, and increased energy and operational expenses that had left the affected sites financially unviable. This round of closures potentially affected 151 of the company’s then 2,456 employees.
Buzz Bingo has since described a “reset” of the business, reporting its best results since the pandemic in its 2023 accounts, with underlying profitability up 14% as the company focused on its omni-channel strategy. Even so, the clubs that closed during this period remain an important part of the chain’s history, with several former venues — some dating back decades as cinemas before their conversion to bingo halls — now lost from the current Buzz Bingo estate.
