Gala Coral Group Ltd is a British betting shop, bingo and casino operator owned by private equity houses Candover Investments, Cinven and Permira. In October 2005 it merged with Coral Eurobet for £2.18 billion. The acquisition made it the UK's third largest bookmaker and largest bingo operator. It also owns over 30 casinos. Coral will remain a brand and trading division of the new group.
The Group headquarters are in Nottingham Gala Bingo and Casino, Barking Coral & Woking Gala Coral E-commerce.
The Group through acquisitions and new developments have over 1500 Licenced Betting Offices.
Gala Bingo operates 175 clubs throughout the United Kingdom, with approximately a 24% share of all clubs and nearly 40% of National Bingo Game ticket sales.
Gala has around five million bingo members, of which approximately 1.2 million are active players. Gala Bingo has an average of 600,000 admissions per week.
The bingo division began participation in the Nectar loyalty card scheme on June 1, 2007.[1] Nectar points were originally awarded for club admissions, and additionally for slot machine play from 1st September 2007 - a first for the UK Bingo industry.
On 31st July 2007 pensioner Pauline Clarke, 62, became Gala's first GBP millionaire, after winning a tie-break against another online player[2].
[edit] Gala CasinosGala Casino operates 20% of the UK casino market through its 32 outlets (30 of which are UK based).
Gala Casinos has 1.3 million members. Roulette is the most popular game by far, accounting for 63% of gaming income. Punto Banco/Baccarat is next with 19.1% and blackjack 11.1%.
[edit] CoralCoral is the fastest growing bookmaker in Britain, and currently has 1579 betting shops as of 15th March 2008. In addition, a bid for the 540 totesport shops has been tabled (see below).
Coral owns two greyhound racing stadia in Britain, at Romford and Hove. Coral also operates betting shops at three of Britain’s biggest racecourses – Cheltenham, Epsom, and Sandown Park (venue of the company sponsored 'Coral Eclipse' race) , plus one each at Gatwick Airport (South Terminal) and Stansted Airport.
Coral also operates an online casino at
www.coralcasino.com and an online gaming site at
www.coralgames.co.uk and an online poker site at
www.coralpoker.comCoral was the first major UK Bookmaker to sign to Turf TV on 22nd December 2007.
[edit] E-Commerce DivisionThe division is responsible for the development, management and operation of all the E-Commerce activities of the Gala Coral Group. The division is also the online betting and gaming arm of the Gala Coral Group, offering a wide variety of products and betting opportunities both in the UK and internationally through the Group’s branded services.
galabingo.com, GalaTV.co.uk, galacasino.co.uk, coral.co.uk eurobet.com sportpress.com Eurobet serves clients in over 130 countries, providing online sports betting in the following languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Greek, Russian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Albanian and Czech.
Other services operated by the division include Gala TV.
Main article: Gala TV
Gala TV is a TV gaming channel that launched on October 4, 2006 on Sky Digital channel 841. The channel shows bingo games.
[edit] International DivisionThe international division of Gala Coral was formally established on 1 October 2007. The aim of the International division is to develop an integrated multi-brand strategy. The first example of this is Italy with Eurobet retail and eurobet.it
Italy The Group won 403 betting licences in the open market tender in December 2006 under its Eurobet brand.
China The Group set up a joint venture to launch land-based bingo in China, with bingo being seen as the most appropriate point of entry for the Group.
[edit] Group History
[edit] Coral Eurobet HistoryJoe Coral (born Joseph Kagarlitski) began his bookmaking business in 1926 and, although primarily concerned with operating betting pitches at racecourses, he did open a credit office in the West End of London in 1943.
He was, though, one of the first to take advantage of the new legislation and duly opened his first licensed betting office in 1961. The new law was, however, not intended to encourage betting and therefore shops were positively unattractive in appearance and devoid of any comforts.
By 1962 there were 13,340 betting offices of which Coral owned 23. During the seventies the situation changed completely and by 1977 four major bookmakers had evolved (including Coral) who owned nearly 24% of the 13,254 shops operating. Coral's number had originally grown to 589 as a result of a merger with another bookmaker, Mark Lane in 1971.
By 1975 the company had become the Coral Leisure Group and had diversified to include a variety of other leisure activities comprising social clubs, casinos, hotels and later holiday camps.
In January 1981, however, the Coral Group was acquired by Bass plc and although it continued to retain the Coral name it became an integral part of the growing Bass Leisure. Bass is one of the oldest established UK companies, William Bass having started the brewing operation in 1777.
With Bass support the number of Coral shops continued to grow during the 80's via acquisitions of Bartletts and Heathorns in 1984, with 13 and 47 shops respectively, PTS in 1985 with 41 shops and Leisure Bookmakers in 1989 with 60 shops.
The private ownership meant that more acquisitions were to come and by the time Coral joined Gala the number of shops had grown to 1260. Coral also owns and operates two greyhound stadiums at Romford and Brighton & Hove (the latter being named the most scenic Greyhound Stadium in the UK), both of which operate using the Coral brand.
At the 2006 UK Gambling Awards, Coral was named "Bookmaker of the Year".
[edit] Gala HistoryGala Bingo was formed in 1991 when Coral Social Clubs (owned by Bass plc) merged with Granada Social Clubs. Gala was officially launched on October 17, 1991 when 17 clubs re-branded and launched a new image. In 1997 a management buy-in purchased 130 Gala Bingo Clubs from Bass. The management team led the management buy-in. The deal was backed by PPM Ventures.
In December 2000, the Gala Group made its first move into the casino sector with the acquisition, of 26 Ladbrokes casinos.
In October 2005, Gala Group and Coral Eurobet merged, creating one of the top 100 companies in the UK.
Private equity firms Candover and Cinven acquired the Group in February 2003 for £1.24 billion, and in August 2005 a third investor, Permira, bought a stake in the company valuing Gala at nearly £1.9bn.
In January 2006, the Group acquired the County Clubs Bingo chain in Scotland, taking the total number of Gala Bingo Clubs to 174. A new bingo club in Cheltenham, Glos, is due to open 29 March.
In February 2006, the Group went on to acquire the Leo Casino in Liverpool, from Dolby Management Ltd (which, as of February 2007 has retained its own separate brand), increasing the number of casinos in the estate to 31 (at the time).
Gala owns 174 Clubs, 32 Casino venues, two Greyhound stadiums, and over 1500 licensed betting offices.
On 7 November 2006, Gala Coral tabled a bid for the 540 state owned Tote licensed betting offices. The sale of the Tote was a manifesto commitment by the Labour Government. The Racing industry (which receives a subsidy from the totepool) has hoped to take it over and, as a consortium (including Arena Leisure, which owns racecourses, the Racehorse Owners Association, and the Racecourse Holdings Trust) made a formal bid. This was blocked on June 1 2005, The European Commission declared that the price the British Government was selling at did not reflect the Tote's market value and was therefore state aid. Gala Coral has proposed to take over the entire operation (paying £405 million), integrate the 540 licensed betting offices into its own operations (it is likely that some shops would have to be sold to rivals to ensure local competition prevails), under the 'Coral' brand, and then sell the Tote's remaining assets (mainly the totepool, raceside bookmakers, telebetting and online betting) to the Racing consortium at a knock down price. As this would be a private transaction, it would not be state aid, in addition the State would receive a fair dividend from the Tote's privatisation . If this goes ahead, Gala Coral will have in excess of 2,000 licensed betting offices, bringing the Company's Coral division to similar size of rivals Ladbrokes and William Hill.
