Regional Director for the North and Scotland and did that for nearly twelve months before being promoted to Operations Director and then Managing Director in quick succession. I left Mecca in May 2009 and was delighted to rejoin Gala Coral Group as Managing Director of Gala Bingo twelve months later.
From that initial placement in 1992 up to the present time, what was it that has kept you attracted to the bingo industry? The main thing that attracted me to the bingo industry was the people, both the customers and those that you work with. One of my favourite sayings in bingo is that if I was to count the number of people that I have worked with in the bingo industry and not got along with, it would probably only take the fingers of one hand. This business has some really great people and I feel privileged to work with them. The customers are great as well. Our customers are down to earth and it is a great environment in which to work. When bingo is delivered at its best it is as good as anything we offer in the UK in terms of entertainment.
This is a really great industry and I really like the nature of the roles that I have had. When I first joined the industry I was very happy when I realised that I was going to get paid for walking around and talking to people. That isn’t a bad job to do.
Similarly, what was it about Gala Bingo that led you to return after eight years away? Clearly, I have worked for a number of bingo businesses in the UK over the years and, while I have enjoyed working in all of them, I have always said that I most enjoyed my time working for the Gala Group. To get the opportunity to lead the biggest company in the industry and one that I know I will look back on as the best business I have ever worked for going forward was just superb. This is a fantastic business that is full of great people. We’ve got some great businesses, some great opportunities and some great challenges. It is a turnaround that I love doing and that I have done
before so I know what I am doing. I know that I have got some great people around me along with some great assets and believe that this is a success story waiting to happen. That’s why I couldn’t be happier than working for Gala Bingo.
Can you give us an update on where Gala Bingo is at the present time? At Gala Bingo we have had a very tough time following the implementation of the smoking ban and the onset of the new Gambling Act in 2007. We were probably more badly impacted than arguably anyone else because we are a private equity business and were very highly leveraged. The change in credit conditions at that time meant that our whole business operation as it stood wasn’t fit for purpose. As a result, we had to take a number of actions as a business that probably exacerbated our decline but we have now managed to turn around our performance and convince shareholders that bingo is a business with a great future. So, all of the previous capital and cash constraints that had been applied to this business over the last three to four years are now being released and I think that what you are going to begin to see is us initially developing products to better serve our customers.
Looking towards the future, what might some of these new ‘products’ entail? We have just begun rolling out Party Extra and are probably about two-thirds complete as it stands now. This is transforming the delivery of mechanised cash bingo (MCB), which is our biggest profit driver, and I feel we are now firmly ahead of the competition in this area. We had significantly under-invested in machines over the years but now we have invested significantly in new Category-C kit and we have also invested in the industry’s leading server-based gaming B3 system and installed this into 70 of our clubs. We’re also in the process of launching a new menu into six trial sites while making huge progress in terms of investing more into our electronic bingo hand-held devices and we’re sure to have some exciting
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