Chain: Leo Leisure

Leo Leisure is a family run chain based on England’s south coast, established in 1985 by husband and wife Peter Brown Snr and Janice Brown, who brought years of experience managing clubs for Ladbroke Bingo before starting the business themselves.

The company’s first purchase was the Shaftesbury Bingo club in Portsmouth, bought from Mecca. The Leo Leisure name itself only came into use later, when the couple opened a second club in Eastleigh in 1994, effectively launching the chain as it’s known today. Growth continued through the following decades: a club in Ryde, Isle of Wight, was taken over in 2007, now run by the couple’s younger son Duncan, sharing a building with the Commodore Cinema. Their elder son Peter later took charge of the wider business, adding a club in Eastbourne along with Leo’s Play Den, a soft play centre that opened in 2012. A further club later opened in Weymouth, and the chain also operates in Southampton.

Today, Leo Leisure describes itself as the largest independently owned, family run bingo chain on the south coast, with clubs in Eastleigh, Eastbourne, Ryde, Weymouth, and Southampton. The company has also diversified slightly beyond bingo, running additional leisure premises alongside its clubs, while keeping the business under continued Brown family ownership and management across two generations.