Gala’s Buzz Bingo rebrand nears completion

Gala Leisure’s £40m (€46m/$53m) transformation of its iconic Gala Bingo division to Buzz Bingo is almost complete with more than 100 of its venues now rebranded and its digital platform lauched.

The change is being promoted by a new marketing campaign that will run to the end of the year across TV, digital and social media. The final 19 of the group’s 103 bingo clubs will become Buzz Bingo venues by the end of February 2019.

The rebrand was announced earlier this year, with Gala aiming to entice a younger audience. In June, Playtech was appointed to run an omni-channel platform that runs across mobile, desktop and on touchpads in all its clubs. 

The rebrand will allow Gala Leisure to fuse its clubs and digital presence as the company and owner Caledonia Investments has not owned the rights to the Gala brand online since the merger of Gala Coral Group and Ladbrokes in 2015.

Stevie Shaves, digital director at Buzz Bingo: “Like our clubs, buzzbingo.com is about community. We have captured the in-club feeling of being among friends and delivered it online. When players log in they see where their ‘Buzz Buddies’ are playing and can join their game in seconds.”

Gala said the work to create buzzbingo.com took the company’s digital team just over a year. It sought market intelligence about players’ experiences from initial sign-up to the size and quantity of the jackpots.

Speaking about the rebrand and new advertising campaign, Amanda Howard, marketing director at Buzz Bingo, told The Drum website: “We’re focusing on our players and providing them with somewhere they can go to have fun and feel part of a community, no matter who they are or where they’re from.

“We designed our new ad campaign to highlight and celebrate that our players span all generations and backgrounds. We want the great British public to fall in love with bingo again.”