In the first news of the New Year affecting the UK online bingo scene, UK land-based and online bingo operator Rank has had an offer made for its famous Mecca bingo chain by one Duke Street Capital.

Words like ‘embattled’ and ‘struggling’ have recently been used in the media to describe Rank’s overall situation and its land-based bingo operations have been turning in some lackluster results.

Of course, the land-based bingo pundits blame the smoking ban and double taxation for their industry’s woes, which makes me wonder why Duke Street would be interested in a land-based operation. Being a private equity outfit, Duke Street don’t exactly bring a lot of bingo experience to the table and if they are going to persevere with a land-based bingo model for the Mecca franchise they are going to need some innovative ideas to compete with online bingo’s growth.

We all know that Mecca does operate a very fine online bingo hall which means it already has the expertise to develop the online bingo games market within its set-up. Maybe this is what Duke Street are hoping for if they are successful in their bid to buy Mecca. But then, all indications are that the ‘embattled’ Rank group are going to rebuff this offer like a few others that have come their way.

Written by John Witherspoon – How about playing bingo online? The best free online bingo games are just one click away.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 am and is filed under Online Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.