Rain eases smoking ban pain for Bingo clubs

By Marc Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - Revenue at England's bingo clubs has dropped since a smoking ban started this month, but the decline has been limited by bad weather encouraging more punters into the clubs, the head of the UK's biggest bingo firm said.

Neil Goulden, chief executive of Europe's biggest gambling firm Gala Coral, told Reuters the wet weather had helped limit the impact of the smoking ban by driving customers from their waterlogged gardens into its bingo clubs.

Continual downpours have affected large parts of England and led to the worst flooding in decades.

"It's very early days but it's not as bad as Scotland (after the smoking ban there) and quite promising ... I'd say around mid single digits (fall in revenues), about 6 or 7 percent at the moment," he said.

"But we are measuring against a pretty poor period last year when we had the (soccer) World Cup and some very hot weather and of course we've had some not so hot weather recently," he added.

With 170 clubs, Gala is Britain's biggest bingo operator, ahead of Rank which has 113 Mecca bingo halls. Both firms saw revenue drop around 15 percent in Scotland when the ban was introduced there a year ago.

Smoking bans hit bingo halls in a number of ways -- many bingo players are older women and some stop going because they don't want to have to stand outside to indulge their habit.

Those who still go step out to smoke in breaks between games instead of playing highly profitable gaming machines, which can earn bingo clubs up to 75 percent of their profits.