Rank’s Grosvenor Casinos reported revenue of £194.2m, up 34% due primarily to the Gala Coral additions. Subtracting the extra venues, Grosvenor revenue actually fell 4%, largely due to poor performance at its London venues, which saw handle fall 6% and win margin fall 2.9% during the period. Total venue profit rose 7% to £29.1m. Rank now operates 56 casinos in the UK and two in Belgium.
Grosvenor’s digital arm rose 32% to £5.8m thanks to the H1 launch of a live dealer offering, which has become the largest online revenue stream. The digital divison’s losses fell 50% to £900k as online customers increased 27% to 42k and spend per visit rose 9% to £29.
Mecca Bingo revenue fell 2% overall to £143.5m, with equal declines in both venue and digital channels. Venue profit fell 36% to £7.1m while digital profit fell 40% to £6.8m. Like many of its counterparts, Rank cited last July’s heatwave as having contributed to a 10% decline in visits to its 97 UK bingo venues but that doesn’t account for the 5% decline in Mecca’s online visits, unless Mecca’s servers are rain-powered. (Rank estimates the total impact of last summer’s sunshine on its H1 group numbers at £3.2m.) Digital spend per visit rose 3% to £12.83 and Mecca mobile revenue rose 24%, accounting for 22% of Mecca’s digital pie, up from 17% in H1 2013.
Rank’s Spanish-facing bingo business Enracha saw revenue up 7% to £14.7m but profit fell 25% to £300k, as customer visits to the 11 Spanish venues were flat and a decline in popularity of Category B3 machines pushed amusement machine revenue down 12%.