Operator News
Rank up by six per cent with growth in both land-based and digital
By Phil - 18 April 2024
Rank Group’s third quarter brought revenue growth of six per cent to £182.3m, with both the venues and digital channels growing by six per cent for the quarter ended March 31 2024
Grosvenor venues grew its revenues by three per cent with a five per cent growth in visit numbers. With this being the seasonally quieter period, average weekly revenue in the quarter was £6.2m, up two per cent on the prior year and down two per cent on Q2.
Mecca venues LFL NGR grew by 12 per cent in the quarter, driven by a five per cent increase in customer visits and a seven per cent increase in spend per visit, particularly benefitting from strong trading over the Mother’s Day and Easter weekends.
Digital NGR grew by six per cent in the quarter with UK growth of four per cent and Spanish growth of 20 per cent. In the UK, Mecca performed strongly with NGR up 21 per cent. Grosvenor grew by just one per cent, impacted by a weaker gaming margin with some big customer wins. Planned reductions in marketing investment led to a 13 per cent reduction in NGR for the Group’s other UK digital brands with improvements in the return on investment delivered in March and continuing into Q4. The new content management system has been successfully launched for both the Mecca and Grosvenor online sites in the quarter, which improves both operational efficiency and speed to market for customer proposition enhancements. In Spain, the Yo brands continued to deliver strong NGR growth.
Rank has entered an agreement to sell its holding in Passion Gaming, an Indian online rummy business, for a nominal consideration. The disposal is expected to complete in the coming weeks.
Performance has continued to improve in April, and Rank expects operating profit for the year ending 30 June 2024 to be in line with the group’s expectations.
John O’Reilly, Chief Executive, said: “We continue to make good progress across both our venues and online businesses, with Q3 trading very much in line with the Board’s expectations. Performance continues to improve, and we have the very important land-based reforms from the Government’s White Paper to look forward to, which we hope to start implementing in the coming months.”
In other news, award-winning presenter Colin Murray has announced a live event series of his unique ‘52’ podcast with Grosvenor, where every question asked to his sporting guests is left to chance.
Back for a second series with an exciting new twist, each episode will be recorded live in front of an audience at Grosvenor Casino venues in Glasgow, Sheffield, Didsbury, Reading, Coventry, and London.
The new 12-episode podcast, recorded over six live events, will see famous names – including boxing legend Tony Bellew, Olympic hockey player and I’m a Celebrity star Sam Quek, 100th cap-winning rugby player Danny Care, and former English footballer Emile Heskey – reveal their hand in an ‘interview’ like no other.
Inspired by the game of poker, guests will shuffle and select a playing card from a deck of 52 cards, where each card features a random question from ‘When did you last cry?’ to ‘What superpower would you like to have?’.
Speaking on the launch of the brand-new podcast event series, Colin Murray, said: “This is the second series of 52, but when we started to record the first one, the world was turned upside-down by Covid! It was the last thing I worked on before lockdown so myself and the team were very happy to actually get it recorded, but at the same time gutted that we couldn’t make it in front of a crowd. So, this is a great chance to put that right, and the lineups we have put together in six different venues are fantastic!”
Amy Culora, Head of Marketing at Grosvenor Casinos, said: “Whether you’re a sports fan or just simply love listening to authentic podcasts, Colin Murray’s 52 delivers a fun, unique, and intimate conversation which reveals answers that we’ve never heard before from some of the greatest in sporting talent.
“Colin has completely reshuffled the typical interview format and sets the agenda for the most authentic and candid sports podcast around. With the added layer of a live audience, we’re set for an unpredictable and exciting series event. Grosvenor Casinos is proud to sponsor Colin Murray’s 52 which will be recorded in six of our clubs across the country.”
