UK in Trouble With Smoking Ban

The report, “Fewer Chips Without Fire” says that the UK casinos are going to be in a lot of trouble once the government puts their smoking ban into force. The report says that the casino industry is going to suffer greatly with the ban going into effect at the beginning of July of this year.

The report says that there is a good chance that the casinos could see a reduction by about 8.4% in casino income just on table games. It cites that when Scotland put the ban in effect, they lost a comparable amount. Considering they only have about a 10-15% operating margin, the reduction would cut considerably into their profits.

The major players will get hurt the most dollar wise – those like Gala Coral and Stanley will feel the biggest reduction in profit because they make the most. They are set to lose millions upon millions of dollars because of the new ban. It is expected that there will be some closures of the smaller casinos because they have even less to work with.

Some places have tried banning smoking in casinos, only to reverse the bans when they found that revenues dropped too drastically for the casinos to continue to operate. In Malta, they reversed the ban because revenues fell drastically, and the government now does not have enough money. The casinos find that they have to cut personnel because the revenue dropped so badly. The smoking ban doesn’t seem to be doing anyone any good except the non-smokers.


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