Rank purchases Isle of Capri Casino for cash.

Rank has announced the purchase of the Ricoh Arena Casino in Leeds for £650,000 cash from the Isle of Capri group. The sale will see the re-branding of the Ricoh Arena Casino to G Casino, part of Grosvenor Casinos which is owned by The Rank Group.

The Ricoh Arena Casino site will receive a £1m investment package which will allow for bringing the site up to the standard that Rank expect prior to the re-launch. It is felt in the industry that this will be good news for the local casino players and public, the casino will be able to remain open to continue to provide casino gaming to the local community and will also mean that there shouldn’t be any job losses required.

The American owned Isle of Capri group have 18 land based and riverboat casinos operating in the States, some of the current locations are Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana. Isle of Capri built the Casino in Coventry in anticipation of changes to the UK gaming laws, the laws never happened and the group were sure that if they did not exit the UK casino market that it would have serious implications for the rest of the Isle of Capri group.

Rank have recently written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling to complain about the changes to taxation for the gambling trade in particular the bingo and poker industry in the recent budget. Rank feel that both the bingo and poker side of their organisation are likely to suffer untold damage by the implication of a higher rate of tax which has risen from 15 per cent to 22 per cent. Rank estimates that they will be £6 million worse off on last years figures.