Full house: bingo halls bank on young to revive fortunes

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Young people in Britain are increasingly choosing bingo halls as a venue for nights out as worries over the cost of living push new customers towards an activity once seen as the domain of pensioners.

Rank Group, which operates 52 Mecca bingo venues across the UK, said 44 per cent of the 187,000 new customers to its halls in the year to June were under 35 years old, up from about 39 per cent in 2019, according to chief executive John O’Reilly.

“It’s because young people are increasingly discerning about where they spend their money, and [are] looking for significant value,” he said. People typically spend about £25 on a night out at bingo, excluding winnings, with a pint of beer costing £3.40 and a bottle of rosé wine £12.

“A night at Mecca Bingo is an inexpensive night . . . In your local pub, if you are buying a round of drinks, you can get rid of 25 quid very, very quickly,” O’Reilly added. Its nightclub-like “high-energy environment” on specific nights is what “students love up and down the country,” he said.

Buzz Bingo, the UK’s largest bingo operator with 82 clubs, said its venues welcomed around 200,000 new visitors in the year to January, around half of whom were under 35 years old. The company is expecting a similar trend this year.

Young players are particularly drawn to its themed events — such as Abba bingo shows — on Fridays and Saturdays, said chief executive Dominic Mansour. It had 45,000 unique customers in the past year at such events, with about a third under 35. The proportion had risen to 40 per cent recently, he added.

“It’s really good value for money in a world where inflation is crazy,” said Mansour. “We even see another trend in some of the London clubs, where people like students come in before they go out just to have a couple of drinks, because it’s cheaper than going to a local Wetherspoons.”

The company, which is investing to allow online and in-club users to interact with live presenters, is also seeing an increase in young customers playing normal bingo games outside of events, he added.

Industry data shows a clear transition. The traditional customers — middle-aged or elderly women — have been more reluctant to return to in-person play following the lifting of Covid social-distancing curbs, according to Mintel. The proportion of over-65s playing bingo in a club in 2022 was a quarter of the figure in 2018, it said.

In contrast, the proportion of 25-34s at a club in the past year was double that of 2018, and among 18-24s the same figure was up by a third, the research company said.

While younger customers before the pandemic had started to appreciate the new environment — halls filled with vibrant music and flashing lights — Greg Johnson, an equity analyst at Shore Capital, said bingo had become part of the experiential leisure trend that is gaining popularity. Bars offering activities from crazy golf and ping-pong to axe-throwing are considered more inclusive than pubs and nightclubs as more people choose not to drink alcohol.

Bingo operators have navigated challenges in the past, from the indoor smoking ban in 2007 to more recent lockdowns and operational cost inflation. The number of UK bingo halls in 2024 stands at 248, down 61 per cent since 2007, according to the Bingo Association.

Dabbers Social Bingo, founded in 2018, is one of the newer operators geared towards younger audiences. Managing director Jonny Unknown said its Bingo Voyage show on Fridays, which offer trips and experiences as prizes rather than cash, “really resonates with younger people”.

Rank has significantly cut the number of its bingo venues from 82 in 2019, and has spent £15mn modernising its halls with new exteriors. O’Reilly said this was the first investment other than maintenance since 2015. Its bingo business came back to profitability last year.

This year, the company is installing larger screens to “make the bingo game more experiential,” using a roving camera in the audience that focuses on winners. “We are starting to see decent prospects for this business that is all about an appeal to a younger audience,” said O’Reilly.