The Stage

Can Blackpool prove itself a winner in numbers game?

Published Tuesday 13 July 2004 at 11:25

July 22 is a date which should appear with a sizeable asterisk beside it in the diaries of Blackpool businessmen and councillors. For on that Thursday, parliament’s joint committee on the draft gambling bill will deliver its final report on what will eventually become the new Gaming Act.

This will not be the first pronouncement from the MPs and peers charged with scrutinising the government’s handiwork. From the point of view of Blackpool and the entertainment industry it will prove the most vital.

On this occasion the focus is most specific. Namely the criteria to be adopted for determining which areas will be eligible for hosting the premier league of new casinos. The so-called resort casinos will be as small in number as they will be massive in capacity. Their scale makes it inevitable that each outlet will bring with it a huge economic infrastructure and thus a significant number of additional jobs to the areas concerned.

Leaving aside consideration of the potential beneficiaries from other industries, it is these new super-casinos which will accommodate most of the hopes of those in the entertainment industry. Ambitious floor shows and even minor performances need an appreciable amount of space and add a sizeable cost to the budget. As so often, this is a situation which favours economies of scale.

In short, if Blackpool is not among the candidates for a gambling resort, then the new gaming law will not prove its salvation. Still less will it provide the light entertainment capital’s workforce of performers with the work they need in their home town.

Not surprisingly, competition for resort status will be fierce. As a means of narrowing down the field, Whitehall and Westminster are in broad agreement that recipients should be confined to those areas most in need of regeneration. The question is, does Blackpool fit the bill?

In many ways it does. Much of the tourist base which sustained it is dying or seeking warmer alternatives abroad. It is more heavily reliant on the entertainment and leisure industry than most and its transport system - ‘serviced’ by a tiny electric rail connection - is risible. A case might easily be made that the town is not only in need of regeneration but, historically, better geared than most to serving the leisure industry.

But then we must ask ourselves why a shrewd US operator such as MGM appears to have looked at Blackpool’s potential and found the area wanting. It has favoured the likes of Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Salford. In proportional terms Blackpool might benefit more. But politics and economics is inevitably a numbers game and these competitors are massive urban centres, with labour forces and votes running into millions. Ominously too, three of them lie on Blackpool’s doorstep. Quite close enough to cater for local entertainers seeking employment. Blackpool must brace itself for its longest seven days.