Lorraine Kelly has been going to the Gala bingo hall in Stratford most weekends for the past two decades. Even though the east London business has changed hands multiple times over that period, she says the place has stayed largely the same.
“Sometimes you get free passes to come and play when new owners take over and that encourages you to play more,” says Ms Kelly, who once won ￡1,000 in a single evening of bingo.
While the customers might not have seen much change, the same cannot be said for the business model. Gala, which merged with rival Coral in 2005, was at the epicentre of one of Europe’s least successful and controversial leveraged buyouts as it was passed around private equity firms in a financial game of pass the parcel that lasted over a decade.