Wellingborough’s Lyric Bingo club to close down

The UK Bingo market has been doing badly recently and the Lyric Bingo club in Wellingborough is the latest to close thanks to poor trading and high overheads. In recent months there has been a few signs of recovery for the industry, aided by a small drop in taxation, but local community bingo clubs are still finding it hard to cope and only the most popular are surviving.

This particular bingo club in the town centre of Wellingborough was owned and managed by a former Gala manager called Tony Wood. The club was crippled by high overheads including rent, service charge and the business rates. The drop in trade really started years ago with the smoking ban and the rises in taxes and legislative changes two years ago hit the industry in a way from which it has never really recovered.

The closure has upset many of the loyal local bingo players who have been visiting the club for years and of course the team of 12 staff will lose their jobs. The Lyric club’s management changed only three years ago and is formerly owned and run by John Wiley and Brent Harding.

It is very unlikely that the club will re-open as there are very few buyers for clubs of this size. There are very small potential profit margins for a club this small and it would only suite an owner operator, however, the costs of applying for a new license will means that the entry level to running a bingo club too high for people who are not very rich.

Tony Wood made a comment on the Lyric website saying, "Sad to say, the days of Bingo in Wellingborough have come to an end.  I would like to say thank you to all the staff who have kept the club together over the last three years.  Barbi has been there 22 years, so for her this has come as shock, but not unexpected".