Following its failure to acquire bookmaker William Hill, the UK’s Rank Group is to invest in its casinos and bingo halls businesses, launching a new chain of bingo clubs.
Rank had combined with 888 to make the William Hill bid, which has now failed, so Rank is projecting a 100-club new bingo chain which will have online games as well as the traditional form of bingo. CEO Henry Birch said that the new chain of clubs would be different from its existing Mecca halls.
Birch said that while the Mecca chain tended to have locations on the outskirts of towns and cities, the new chain would centre on "convenience gaming." He would open a few of the smaller-style halls early next year. He would not reveal the name of the new chain, but City analysts have pointed out that Rank recently registered the names of Luda, Luma and Kuda as trademarks.
Rank’s annual results, revealed at the same time as Birch’s revelations on the new bingo chain, showed that profits for the year to the end of June 2016 rose 1.1 per cent to £708.5m and profit was up nearly 15 per cent to £85.5m. The Grosvenor casino chain’s revenues were up 3.6 per cent to £438.6m and the Mecca clubs were down 0.7 per cent to £287.7m.
