Building a Casino
During the renovation process under Thomas ’ leadership which started in 2009 , the neighboring building also became available , Cranbourn Mansions . It was a “ gentlemen ’ s ” apartment block , and this was incorporated into the plans , nearly doubling the square footage of the property . Still , the renovation was planned to return to the original atmosphere and design by Matcham .
When it opened as the Hippodrome Casino in 2012 , it immediately became the largest and busiest casino in the U . K . Simon Thomas drove the development with the wise counsel of his father Jimmy . Jimmy passed away in 2022 .
Simon Thomas says that running a casino in the U . K . isn ’ t as easy as it might be in other jurisdictions . The regulations can strangle the most profitable parts of the casino . One example is slot machines . The Hippodrome has been limited to 20 machines . But the recently passed White Paper from the U . K . Gambling Commission was good news for the U . K .’ s land-based casinos , allowing them more slot machines , Thomas says .
“ The principal tenets of the changes were to modernize the law since the last changes in 2005 ,” he explains , “ to make sure the balance between player opportunity and player protection was there and rebalance online and offline gaming .
“ It ’ s now agreed . The only thing stopping us taking advantage of it is that the actual regulations have got to be laid before Parliament . We ’ ve got a bit of consultation ongoing just to confirm the finer detail , but from a landbased casino point of view , we ’ re finally going to be allowed to have more slot machines .”
With the revised law , Thomas says the land-based casinos will be more on a level playing field with other jurisdictions .
“ It should have been reviewed in 2013 . It didn ’ t get reviewed . So we ’ re 10 years late , but it will allow us to quadruple the number of machines we can have up to 80 . And we can also have a betting license so we can have sports bars , and have more forms of electronic payment — just modernization , really . And the high-end casinos will in time be allowed to do credit for high-end overseas banked customers , more like we can in every casino worldwide .”
But just as things were improving , the pandemic dealt the Hippodrome , and all British casinos , a wicked blow .
“ Covid hit like a sledgehammer . We were shut for 320 days ,” he says . “ Stage one of the pandemic gave us a lot of worries . It felt like we were going to go bust . My salary bills alone were £ 2.5 million a month . I had £ 12 million in the bank , so that didn ’ t look good . In stage two , we said that we ’ ll find a way through this — borrowing money , cutting costs , rationalizing , government furlough , etc . But stage three was the most interesting part . It ’ s a real Hippodrome story . We thought , let ’ s take this and flip it the other way around . Make it an opportunity , not a problem . We ’ re normally open 24 / 7 , so to have 320 days of being closed gave us an opportunity to do all sorts of things that would ’ ve been a real challenge when we ’ re open .
“ We did some big infrastructure projects , changing things like updating our air conditioning and lifts . We also built a fifth floor on the top of the building which is now a really cool roof terrace . We doubled the size of our fourth floor to get some more outdoor smoking and gaming tables . We moved our poker rooms and completely refurbished the areas . We call them our PokerStars Live suite of rooms .
“ And we repositioned ourself in the market . I think we had perhaps been a bit cautious on our pricing , wanting to have the security of volume , but when our volume was restricted by regulations during Covid , we increased our minimums to play to the upper parts of our customer base , and as the restrictions fell away , we held them there , and as a result we ’ ve come out of Covid flying . We have 10 percent less customers and twice as much profitability . And recently we ’ ve added on two parts of the building we didn ’ t control .”
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