Earlier this week, Full House Holdings, the parent company of Buckingham Bingo which was founded in Preston in 1970, reported it had raised around £30m from the sales.

It used the cash to pay back £28m it owed to banking giant Barclays.

The sale of the Manchester based bingo clubs owned by Buckingham Bingo was completed last month with deals totalling £20m which is just a fraction of the £90 million price paid for it in 2005.

Two bingo operators, Club3000 and Castle Leisure, acquired the nine bingo clubs.

Club3000, which is by entrepreneur Brian Fraser, acquired the Buckingham Bingo clubs in Middleton, Trafford, Walkden, Peterlee in Co Durham, Bradford, Preston and Huyton, Liverpool. Brian Fraser already operated three other clubs in Scotland and south Wales under the Club3000 brand.

Castle Leisure a privately-owned group which has 11 bingo clubs following the deal, acquired the Buckingham Bingo clubs in Corby and Bootle. The company clearly has ambitious concerns after moving into the bingo market in England in December with the purchase of the club in Birmingham. Prior to December the company locations were all within Wales.

The sports betting operator, Betfred, acquired BuckyBingo.com and sister site BOGOFBingo.com.

Buckingham Bingo History

While Buckingham Bingo was a thriving company and an elite operator within the bingo industry up until a few years ago the company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons – mostly to do with the extensive debts it has associated with it. Unfortunately the company had been unable to deal with its debts and failed to become a success and investors suffered the consequences.

The company which was sold to Alchemy Partners in 2005 for £90m.

Buckingham Bingo was founded by Panico Panayi around 40 years ago. It had 9 purpose built bingo clubs and was the largest independent bingo operator in the north of England. It was sold to Alchemy Partners when the industry peaked in 2005 for £90m. This was roughly the same time that Beacon Bingo was sold for £100m. Following the smoking ban and changes in legislation the value of the company plummeted and Alchemy were given the choice to inject significant amounts of cash into the business or write off their stake leaving Barclays in full control of the company. Alchemy went with the latter and Barclays Ventures was handed control and subsequently put the company up for sale