If we’re to start at a proverbial ground zero, I’d like to start with a very basic question. What was your take on the UK’sGambling Act White Paper? And how did it affect bingo in particular?
I think there are four areas that particularly relate to land-based bingo. In no particular order, one is cashless and the use of a debit card directly onto a gaming machine. The second is the removal, or at least the amendment, of the 80-20 rule. This is where you’re only allowed one in five of your machine entitlement to be a category B3 machine.
The third would be bingo bets – an attempt to broaden the understanding and definition of what is a game of bingo within a licensed bingo premise. And then the fourth area is more of a concern: the threat of a statutory levy, particularly one that’s higher than the current level is now. So those are the four things that are really preoccupying us with regard to the White Paper.
Is it too simplistic to say “three are good and one is potentially bad?”
Yeah – you could say three good and one is to be avoided.
Different sectors have been affected in different ways. For example, land-based casinos can now go from 20 slot machines to 80 if the White Paper’s recommendations are written into law, so there’s a huge plus for them. Obviously, for online operators a lot of the recommendations have been more restrictive. Is bingo on the more positive side of what’s been affected by the White Paper?
Yes, definitely. I think the White Paper, for the first time in a long time, really seeks to differentiate between land-based businesses and online businesses; it acknowledges they’re different and that they have their own different challenges. And I think, for the land-based sector, the White Paper has got some opportunities in it. Whereas for the online world, they will just see it, as you rightly say, as more restrictive regulation. At the Bingo Association, we solely represent licensed bingo premises within Great Britain and not online operators.
Would that mean online bingo operators are effectively your competitors?
Well, when I was giving evidence recently in the House of Commons about the impact of the White Paper, I was asked that very question by the Chair: exactly how and where does online bingo fit in? We’re quite clear that it’s been around a long time and it’s here to stay. It is competition, but so are lots of other things. Would you rather you have no competition?
Of course you would. But online bingo is not going away, so we have to learn to compete with it; and some of our members in the Bingo Association do have an online presence as well. So we can’t claim to be categorically land-based only, as the likes of Mecca and Buzz, toname but two, also have online bingo sites.
Could you give us a summary of your main points when providing evidence in the House of Commons?
One of my main points reinforced what we just mentioned, that we’re largely focused on land-based. There was a suggestion from the Chair that TV adverts that were glamorising online bingo may in some way spill over into land-based bingo. But that’s not the case. In our sector, I think there’s a concern that if you glamorise bingo for women, more women will take up gambling and potentially over time become vulnerable to harm. But we’re not seeing any connection at all between online and retail.
At the Bingo Association, we solely represent licensed bingo premises within great Britain and not online operators
I was also asked about the levy. In many ways, the levy was the biggest issue that came up in the hearing. Land-based has a very different model to online. We have staff heating, rent, all these sort of costs to bear. So gross gaming yield is a bit of an unfair way of assessing what we should pay in terms of a levy. We’ve made it quite clear we make something like £40m ($51.9m) a year in profit and that’s probably the most we’re going to make this year; it could be as low as £35m.
The current contribution point of 0.1% is worth nearly £500,000, so you can see that even at that level, half a million out of a profit of £35m is still quite a big chunk. If that was to increase or even double to £1m, it eats into industry profits. And then you start to see operators buckle under that sort of fiscal pressure, particularly when we’re perceived to be at the low end of the harm threshold. So we’re fighting really, really hard to make sure that, if there is a statutory levy, it’s not set at a higher rate than it already is.
In terms of what you’re expecting – or at least hoping for – what kind of time frame is there before we see actual change, and the White Paper’s recommendations are written into law, when operators can definitively act on it?
There are commonly quoted as 62 different pieces of work to come out of the White Paper and obviously that’s all going to take time. I think the Gambling Commission have made it quite clear they want to get the big-ticket issues out of the way as they see them; which are, as you describe, largely online-based and “restrictive.” So the concern of land-based is that it’ll take a long time for any of these liberalisations to come through and, by the time they do, it’ll be too late. It’ll be another year and a half or two years down the line and land-based is finding it hard enough already.
So what we’re trying to argue for, and what we’d like to see, is a bit of parity between some of the restrictive, for lack of a better word, regulation and some of the liberalisation that might come to the industry. Otherwise, it’s going to be front loaded with regulatory restriction and any good to come out of the Act will come towards the end.
If there was one thing you could single out and hope for at this stage, what would it be specifically – other than just aspeeding up of the process?
The biggest quick win for us is probably the 80-20 rule on category B and category C gaming machines. If that would come in pretty quickly, there’d be some short-term benefits and that would be incredibly useful. It would also be good to have some certainty about where the levy is going to be set as quickly as possible.
There might not be anything within those two specific examples; but are there any measures bingo operatorscan pre-emptively take right now?
We know exactly what these initiatives are going look like. We’ve got a White Paper that’s now saying this is what we’re going to do. We’ve got a whole load of consultations that we are going to have to negotiate in terms of how we do it and what it will look like when it’s done. So you could argue that, actually, we’re only at the halfway mark: we’re at half-time in a football match.
We’ve got the decision and that’s taken us a long time to get to. It’s taken us two to three years and lots of different administrations and ministers. But now we’re in a battle to get these things implemented and delivered onto the High Street. There are still a lot of negotiations and a lot of detail to be decided.
Is it at least a relief that we’re at that “half-time” point, because obviously we were waiting for the actual White Paper for so long?
I think the industry would like to be at the full 90 minutes. Yes, we’ve got the White Paper. Finally, we know what it says. Let’s just get on with it and make it happen – good, bad or ugly. But I think there’s going to still be a lot of toing and froing on exactly what it looks like. In between all the bumps in the road, which is energy, the White Paper and a cost of living crisis the underlying business has been quite resilient. And thank goodness, following a really difficult period during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many others, we’re not the only ones. We know that.
But it’d be nice to have a period of time without any bumps in the road, so we can continue to grow, develop, innovate and invest in new businesses. To do that, you need certainty. Every business will tell you they need certainty. Bingo is no different. So we would like to get the White Paper enacted as quickly and as efficiently as possible
I would like the DCMS, the Gambling Commission and the industry to work really hard and really quickly – to get these liberalisations and new regulations in place as soon as possible. So that we’ve got a clear vision and we can move forward quickly.
