Tuesday, Jun. 14th 2011 4:00 PM
If you follow the bingo news lines around the web, you’ll have been seeing a lot of ill-informed press coverage about the collapse of a lady at a bingo hall in Brighton. Players and press alike have been sharing a mock outrage at the incident and claiming that Gala Bingo were irresponsible to continue playing the games whilst the lady was ill. Some anti-gaming groups have seized this as an example of how Gala Bingo is more interested in profit than its players’ welfare. Well, let me set you all straight, there are sound reasons why the game should continue, and far from not caring about a collapsed player, they could in fact save their life.
Unsurprisingly, this is not an uncommon thing to happen. In fact at the club I used to call at, one woman died (and was revived by a member of staff) right at front of the hall where everyone could see. This was not a Gala Club, but like Gala, the policy was to continue calling in these situations and for a number of good reasons, none of which are to do with profit.
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Wednesday, Apr. 27th 2011 4:01 PM
If you’ve been in your local newsagents recently, or watching TV (in between the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Royal Wedding) then there’s a good chance you’ve seen the National Lottery’s latest Bingo themed scratchcard instant game.
Now, if you’ve been following the ins and outs of bingo news the last few years, you might recall that the National Lottery has had a bit of a thing against the UK’s retail bingo industry. Back in 2008, the National Lottery launched its Flamin’ Hot Bingo game, with an advert that seemed to all to be poking fun at the land based bingo industry, showing a dowdy old woman on a mobility scooter pulling up to her local bingo hall to find herself locked out, the club showing a large closed sign.
The Bingo Association rightly took exception to this portrayal and lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority. The complaint was upheld and the National Lottery were told not to run the advert again. You can read the full complaint and adjudication here. The advert was stopped, and the game disappeared not long after, but the event showed the Lottery held one of its nearest retail competitors in contempt.
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