Online Bingo Operator Gala Bingo Effected by Redundancies

July 3, 2009

Gala Coral Group announces to staff that it is to cut 45 jobs from its HQ in an exercise to slim-line and integrate both the online and land based marketing divisions. The online division runs GalaBingo.com, the leading UK online bingo provider.

LONDON, ENGLAND, July 03, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Gala Coral Group announced to its staff yesterday that it was to cut 45 jobs from its headquarters in an exercise to slim line and integrate both the online and land based marketing divisions. The online division handles both the running and marketing of Galabingo.com, the leading UK online bingo provider.

This news comes as a huge blow to the company after a recent announcement that the land based division was to cut 300 jobs from the Gala Bingo Halls, in addition to further bingo hall closures.

Staff at Gala Coral headquarters were told yesterday about the job cuts as an exercise to trim back mainly marketing and operations. The impact of these cuts is yet to be felt but more will be known in the next couple of weeks. Galabingo.com, the online bingo side of the business will continue to run as normal as these changes take place.

The cost cutting announcement comes as it's reported that The Gala Coral Group have been under immense pressure to pay off a reported GBP2.5 billion in debt that is crippling the business.

The Gala Coral Group is one of Europe's largest gambling companies with interests in bookmaking, bingo and casino. They currently operate 4 brands in Europe; Coral, Gala Casino, Eurobet, and Gala Bingo.

The Gala Coral Group was hit extremely hard financially in 2007 when the UK smoking ban was imposed on all of their land based operations, but felt the effects most in their bingo halls as players were either put off from visiting the bingo halls, or spent the majority of their spare time outside smoking instead of playing their interval and slot games, a huge revenue generator for Gala Bingo. This together with the laws on limited number of fixed odds gambling machines in bingo halls have brought a large drop in revenue drop, however at the same time the online bingo website, Galabingo.com really took off and is now seen as a big driver of growth in the group which is why the redundancies in the online operations come as a shock.

Private equity firms Candover and Cinven acquired the Gala Coral Group in February 2003 for GBP1.24 billion, and in August 2005 a third investor, Permira, bought a stake in the company.

"With Gala Bingo recently launching a new bingo brand by the name of Minxy Bingo, using the Virtue Fusion bingo platform, it begs the question of whether Gala Bingo were actually testing the theory of whether or not it would be feasible to cut development costs by returning to a 3rd party provider rather than continuing the expensive development of their proprietary bingo platform" says David C, Bingo Analyst for online bingo portal Groovy Bingo.

Groovy Bingo is an online bingo portal open to all bingo enthusiasts and fans across the UK and Eire.

Source: Groovy Bingo
Website: http://www.groovybingo.co.uk

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