In the past six months, Ian Burk, Chief Executive Officer of Rank Group has visited eighty of the groups 114 bingo clubs and for a man who doesn’t gamble this is one heck of an expedition. He ahs also visited 30 out of the 33 Grosvenor Casinos, many of the Hard Rock Units and the groups’ Spanish Bingo businesses. That is a lot of venues to visit since he came over to Rank from Holmes Place in March last year to head the group, at least one a day!
He says it hasn’t been too difficult, as bingo ends at 9:30 pm, just when the casinos are starting to get going, so he has been combining visits. This energetic fifty year old man who has scaled Scafell Pike, Mount Snowden and Ben Nevis, plans to bring the same kind of energy to the group and has found the bingo clubs and other enterprises to be good businesses which employ passionate people.
Since Ian Burke took over the group Mecca bingo ticket prices had dropped and prize boards increased, he said that in 1999, Mecca Bingo paid out ₤200 million in prizes and last year only ₤180 million and this is the kind of thing that people notice. He aims to change all that!
Tags: Bingo, Bingo prizes, Mecca Bingo