End of an era: Bingo shutdown at Chances Casino in Kelowna

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“Would you like me to cry now or do you want to hear the story? Where do you want me to start?”

Those were the first words Stan Walt, owner of Chances Casino in Kelowna, uttered when iNFOnews.ca asked him about his official announcement yesterday, Aug. 15, that bingo was permanently closed.

It may seem like a lighthearted comment from a man who made a business decision based on post-COVID restrictions and other changes in the world that no longer allows bingo to be viable.

But, his love of bingo runs much deeper than a simple business and his decision marks the end of an era not only for Kelowna but for much of the gaming world.

“I know there were many people disappointed by this because it’s been the fibre and fabric of their lives, as it has been of mine for 40 years, and longer than that,” Walt said.

COVID triggered the final death knell to bingo in a facility that started strictly as a bingo hall in the Blue Heights industrial park in 1992 before moving to its current location on Springfield Road in 2002. COVID restrictions forced Chances to close for 16 months.

But the game had been in decline for a number of years, despite Walt’s efforts to spread his love for bingo across Western Canada.

“As a kid, my grampa took me to bingo,” Walt said. “He had a good deal going with me. He would give me five bucks and say: ‘OK. You go and play bingo and we’ll split whatever you win.

“He lived with us at our home and Tom Dooley, who ran the bingo session, lived across the street so we’d get a ride downtown with Tom. I helped Tom set up the bingo program at 4:30 in the afternoon and my grampa would go down to the pub and drink beer until 9:30 when bingo ended and Tom Dooley would give us a ride back home again.”

There were the odd occasions when Walt paid out some winnings to his grampa but he never won big.

“It’s where the beginnings of an understanding of what a bingo player goes through came from,” he said. “The excitement of the game and the excitement of getting close by one number is almost as high as actually getting to yell Bingo!”

Historically, that’s how bingo was learned.

“The next generation of bingo players was taught by the previous generation because grammas took their granddaughters to bingo or aunts took their nieces and nephews to bingo,” Walt said. “They learned the game when they were young teens. They strayed away from it, obviously, when life moved on. Then you started to see that population come back to bingo as they settled in their middle years because it was great entertainment and it still connected them with their older family members.”

Then age restrictions were put into bingo halls and that generational transfer ground to a halt.

“Nobody learned to play bingo so, when they were 19, it was: ‘No, I’m not going with my aunt to bingo,’” he said. “So you lost it.”

Smoking restrictions imposed in 2008 immediately chased away half the bingo players.

Despite installing high-capacity ventilation systems, that business never came back.

Pre-COVID, Walt hosted “Fun Fridays” aimed at university-aged players and hosted by a radio personality.

But when COVID hit, that event ended and by the time he could re-open on July 1, 2021, the students who knew the game had moved on.

While he did extensive renovations to the bingo area during COVID, including a raised floor and a $50,000 bingo calling station, the game never resumed.

Part of that was due to the fact the capacity and safe-distancing restrictions remained in place.

Walt took his 348 slot machines and spread them out into the bingo space so there were two metres between each machine. He had to reduce the number of machines to 310 when he reopened but is now back to full capacity.

“Opening up of the gaming floor has been very well received by the players,” Walt said. “They seem to enjoy the extra space and not being tucked in tight.”

Table games, which were set to launch pre-COVID, started up in October and have proven popular but, because of staffing issues, Chances is only able to offer them at night. Walt expects to have table games running during the day in October.

Those kinds of staffing issues are another reason for not restarting bingo.

To do so would require the immediate hiring of 50 new staff. None of his former bingo staff returned after COVID so there would be significant training costs. Higher wages and other changes would boost his costs by 20-25%.

Another nail in the bingo coffin was the fact that the number of players had declined so much that there was not much incentive to play.

Unlike slots or table games, bingo is parimutuel. That means the money players put in to play the game goes towards the jackpot – some of which were in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.

With fewer players, the pots can drop to the $50 to $60 range and it can end up costing more to play than they can win in a single game.

With bingo, it was not unusual to have 800 people at Chances on a good day. Now 300 is considered a busy day.

Chances Casino in Kelowna is one of the few in the province that successfully integrated bingo with slots, Walt said.

Chances in Kamloops and Salmon Arm still have bingo but only on weekends.

"The only large-scale operation, similar to Chances in Kelowna, is at Treasure Cove Bingo and Casino in Prince George,” Walt said.

This is a marked decline from a trend that Walt started in August 1982 by opening the Regina Bingo Palace in an old supermarket location on a shoestring budget, using his motorcycle as collateral, and partnering with his sister and brother-in-law.

At the time, it was the only bingo hall west of Winnipeg but, through a number of partnerships, Walt helped establish bingo through much of Western Canada before selling out and becoming the sole owner of Chances in Kelowna in 1992.

The last bingo game he hosted was March 16, 2020 before being shut down due to COVID.

So, what is it about bingo that made it the core of what he was and did for 40 years?

“It’s the people,” Walt said “The bingo-playing population are very down to earth, good hearted, primarily just working people, blue collar people. That’s who I am. That’s who I was when I started. I related to it.”

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