It all started in 1997, when a management buy-in purchased 130 Gala Bingo Clubs from Bass Breweries. The management team at the company led the buy-in, having had the deal backed by PPM Ventures.

The Gala Group made its first move into the casino business in December 2000 when it purchased 26 Ladbrokes Casinos from the Hilton Group. They were now very well placed as the established leaders in the high volume, low stake area of the gaming market.

In February 2003, the private equity firms of Candover and Cinven acquired the group, purchasing it for the bargain price of £1.24 billion. In the August of 2005, Permira, a third investor, bought a piece of the company. It was now valued at almost £1.9 billion.

Gala became one of the top hundred companies in the UK when they purchased Coral Eurobet in the October of 2005. This deal fashioned Europe’s finest integrated bingo, gaming and betting company, giving them a very strong market position in the gaming industry.

The start of 2006 was very busy for the Group as in January they purchased the Country Clubs Bingo chain in Scotland. In February they acquired the Leo Casino in Liverpool.

Gala now owns approximately 162 bingo clubs, 29 casinos (one in Gibraltar), and almost 1,600 licensed betting offices. At the moment they have a licence to run 360 outlets in Italy and have opened about 80% of these.

Gala claims that their weekly pay-out tally averages a staggering £15 million, and they have something like five million members who play regularly either online or at the halls.  They report that there is a Gala winner every ten seconds of every minute of every day throughout the year, collecting jackpots and prizes valued at an amazing £800 million per annum!  One every ten seconds equates to an unbelievable three million prize winners every year.  It is not surprising that Gala claims to be the UK’s biggest bingo provider – however you choose to measure it.

Online games range from very classic bingo to roulette, lotto, and slots.  In the halls there is also New Deal, No Deal (jackpot edition), Monopoly, and Cleudo, offering very big jackpots of up to £1.5 million.

Click on ‘Our Games’ on the Gala website (www.galabingo.co.uk) and a list of more than sixty game choices appears, including virtual scratch cards, bingo, hi-low playing cards, dice, and a whole lot of other options.  There is also blackjack, and a simple but very popular game that Gala calls ‘Casino War’ where each player is dealt a card and the highest card wins – no nonsense!

So, whether you are going down the High Street for an evening of bingo and gaming, or if you want a big company that you can trust when playing online, Gala Bingo has to be up there amongst the biggest and best options.

Gala Bingo’s free games are played throughout the day between 9am and midnight, with over £1,500 in winnings up for grabs. To take advantage of the free bingo games, sign in and play in any of the regional club rooms (The North, The South, Midlands, Wales and Scotland), free games will be offered throughout the day.

Together with free bingo games, Gala Bingo also offers a £20 bonus for new players who deposit and spend £5 on any of their bingo games.

There is also the chance to play with your friends with the all new Windicate feature, where you can invite up to 5 of your friends to join your group and if anyone of the group wins a full house every member will receive 50p free. So the more Windicates you join the greater chance of you winning!

Check out the Gala Bingo website for up to date news and promotions, happy playing!

Katie Price (aka Jordan) was unveiled as the face of Foxy Bingo back in 2006. The appointment was made in an attempt to bring bingo into the mainstream. They created ‘Katie’s Charity Bingo Room’ and donated 50% of all bingo cards purchased on Monday evenings to charities chosen by Ms Price. However, in January 2008 Foxy Bingo and Ms Price terminated their working relationship on the grounds that they could no longer compete for her time without a significant investment.

Gala Bingo announced its partnership with X-Factor’s Sharon Osbourne also in 2006. It launched a series of nationwide TV commercials featuring Mrs Osbourne promoting Gala Bingo Online. Gala also launched Gala TV, the first live interactive bingo TV channel, presented by Mrs Osbourne and she recently launched her own bingo website in collaboration with Gala, www.sharonsbingo.com.

Former Atomic Kitten member Kerry Katona was one of the first ‘bingo celebrities’ announcing her partnership with Bingos in 2005. Bingos originally had four bingo rooms, each with its own progressive jackpot. Kerry was originally a caller at the site and featured on the home webpage.

The latest job cuts come after the restructuring of the company last November, in which it changed its five operating divisions into three, with Gala stating that support functions would be handled “centrally rather than through the divisions”.

In a statement, Gala Coral’s chief executive Neil Goulden said: “Having reduced the number of divisions to three, evolution says now what about the HR structure and the finance structure”.

A further 100 jobs will be cut due to the closure of five more bingo halls in Port Glasgow, Leven, Hull St Stephens, Aldridge and Pitsea; these follow last week’s closure of the Gala Bingo hall in Crystal Palace.

Mr Goulden stated that the latest job cuts and bingo hall closures were a direct result of the government’s decision to raise gross profits tax on bingo from 15% to 22%.

Gala bingo has been based in the United Kingdom and it is known as a premiere online bingo site. The Gala bingo is a huge internet company and has more than 17,000 employees and operates 175 bingo clubs. Hence Gala bingo is offering its customer a solid product and people keep coming back for a reason. The Gala bingo rooms provide the players with a great opportunity to win money along with the options of huge bonuses, which are vital for any casino based company.

Gala bingo offers the players with options of slots, online lotto, roulette and variants of monopoly that can help you to win real money. Thus the Gala bingo site provides the players with a great opportunity of winning money and helps the players to enjoy the game. The site has been known for its pay outs and regular payments and thus there is a strong reliability factor in the site. This helps Gala bingo to help the players enjoy great games along with providing them a base to experiment with new games and also carry on with the classic versions of the game.

Each new member to Sharon’s Bingo will receive £10 free and games start from just 1p per card. Other promotions include, 1 To Go and 2 To Go, where everyone with one or two numbers to go wins 50p, Sharon’s Hour with tickets at 5p each and a range of BOGOF games throughout the day.

There is also a range of 1 penny games between 15:00 and 16:00 in the Los Angeles club every day, as well as special Midnight Express games between midnight and 1 am, where tickets are only 5p each.

Promotions are changing all the time, so be sure to check the website for the latest offers.

Mrs Obama’s Bingo games are also back this week, with games between 8pm and 9pm; Gala Bingo will be donating 10p of every £1 spent to Sue Ryder Care. This is the second time that Mrs Obama and Gala Bingo have teamed up for the charity, with Mrs Obama saying: “I am delighted to help galabingo.com raise funds for the Sue Ryder Care charity”.

Sue Ryder Care Charity offers assistance and care for those who suffer with serious illnesses, such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis and Huntington’s disease; they also offer advice and support for the families of those affected.

The Mrs Obama’s Bingo game ran from the 14th to the 23rd of January for an hour each evening, and is thought to have raised over £10,000 for Sue Ryder Care. Gala Bingo have said they will match the money, so over £20,000 will go to this worthwhile charity, which gives care and support to those suffering with serious illnesses.

Head of marketing for Gala Bingo, Clive Cottrell said:  “Mrs Obama’s bingo game was just one of the ongoing activities being undertaken by Gala Coral Group to meet our target of raising GPB 1million by 2010 for Sue Ryder Care.”

Bingo halls as well as pubs and clubs have had to adapt since the smoking ban was introduced in the summer of 2007, and Gala bingo hopes that its new hi-tech smoking shelter will attract new customers and prove popular with its existing players.

Assistant manager in the Fenton Gala Bingo Robert Jones said: “When you look at some bingo clubs and see people smoking outside, it does look quite unsociable. But with this smoking shelter it’s more social, they can have a drink, chat with their friends, and they can carry on playing”.

The smoking shelter, which is heated, has over 30 coin activated machines, with prizes ranging from £10 to over £1000. Customers at the bingo hall are said to be impressed by the new shelter and the outdoor games are already becoming a hit.