A new survey among online bingo players shows that the average age of online bingo players have fallen during the last year. The research is based on player’s stats and bingo records that all shows that online bingo now attracts more of the younger people. Up and until now the general belief has been that bingo and online bingo is just a game for old ladies, but this seems to be changing now, with the average age having dropped from people in their early 50’s to people in their late 30’s. This is a huge jump and a huge success for the industry as a whole. Industry observers believe that the reason for this change is found in the fact that more and more young adults are looking for alternative ways of gambling. A land-based bingo hall in the UK in the city of Peterborough reported that the attraction of young people ended up attracting 400% more people in the bingo hall. The manager at Gale bingo, Mark Dowling said: “The gambling industry is recession resilient, but not recession proof. People are still coming and having a night out. Perhaps they are not spending quite as much when they are here, but it’s still a fabulous night out. We’ve lost around 20 per cent of our business through the smoking ban, but people have started coming back. We probably won’t get back to the heady heights of a few years ago but the decline has been halted and we’re seeing an up-turn now.” Gala Bingo is the biggest high street bingo operator in the UK and has more than 175 bingo clubs in the UK with 5 million members. The bingo operator pays out more than £28 million every week in winnings to the members. Gala bingo is part of the Gala Group that counts Gala Bingo and Casino, Eurobet and Coral gaming.
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