he owner of Mecca Bingo has said that it benefited from wetter weather this summer, which pushed people into its centres.
Rank Group said that net gaming revenue at Mecca had increased by 17% since the start of its financial year in July.
“Mecca venues had a very strong start to the year, benefiting from the wet weather in July and early August,” it told shareholders on Thursday.
Rank revealed that Mecca’s net gaming revenue, on a like-for-like basis, had increased 7% in the year to the end of June, with the number of visits to its sites rising by 4%.
This was slower than some of Rank’s other businesses because Mecca has taken longer to recover from the pandemic. It said that older bingo customers had been the slowest to return.
It shut 15 Mecca sites during the year and has 56 left. The business said that it had taken a £7.7 million hit from the cost of closing these sites, and one other, during the year.
It also took a £119 million hit in impairment charges because many of its venues had not performed as well as hoped.
Partly as a result of that, Rank swung from a pre-tax profit of £73 million to a £123 million loss during the most recent financial year.
Like-for-like net gaming revenue rose 4% at Grosvenor Casinos during the period, with all the growth coming in the second half of the year.
Chief executive John O’Reilly said: “The return of customers to our Grosvenor and Mecca venues continues to pick up and our second half numbers give cause for optimism after a very challenging couple of years.
“During that time, our UK venues have faced a surge in energy costs, high wage inflation, a tightening in the regulatory environment, the slow return of overseas visitors to London’s casinos and the more general pressures on the consumer’s discretionary expenditure.
“However, energy costs have stabilised, inflation appears to now be easing, customers continue to slowly return to both our Grosvenor and our Mecca venues and we now expect to deliver good levels of revenue and profit growth.”