Chain: Majestic Bingo (Lost Halls)
At its peak, Majestic Bingo operated as many as 14 clubs across the UK, in locations including Cornwall, Skegness, Castleford, Donnington, and Gwynedd, having built its estate from 2014 onwards through the purchase of Seldis Cooper’s premises and several Top Ten Bingo Apollo clubs.
The chain’s estate shrank considerably in its final years before administration. Clubs in Mansfield, Barrow, and Durham were sold off as the company came under mounting financial pressure, with the Mansfield site’s Apollo branded club bought by rival operator Club 3000. The most damaging single loss came in May 2021, when a serious electrical fire gutted the company’s Spalding club, which also served as Majestic’s head office. The venue never reopened, and staff were eventually made redundant in August 2022 once it became clear the club wouldn’t return to trade.
By July 2023, with turnover falling and losses widening, Majestic Bingo Limited entered administration, blaming a mix of pandemic recovery problems, rising energy costs, and the wider cost of living crisis. At that point the company was down to eight clubs and around 143 jobs. All eight were ultimately sold to Real Fun Group Ltd that December, saving the venues and jobs, but the Majestic Bingo name and company structure that had run the chain since 2014 effectively came to an end at that point, with the surviving clubs continuing on under new ownership.
Taken together, Spalding, Mansfield, Barrow, and Durham represent the confirmed closures from Majestic’s own final years as an independent chain, on top of whichever of the original 14 clubs had already been lost prior to that period, separate from the eight venues that survived into the Real Fun Group era.
