Ritz Club Owe Gamblers £780,000 Claim

An article in a UK newspaper claims the Ritz Club Casino owe gamblers more than three quarters of a million pounds following the permanent closure of the high profile venue back in May last year.

The Metro carried the article stating that £780,000 is still unclaimed by punters that show on the documents released to another investigative paper Private Eye. The Ritz Club closed during the first UK lockdown due to COVID-19 last year following two years of major losses, in total in 2018 and in 2019 the casino reported that it had lost over £20 million.

Owned at the time by Sir Frederick and Sir David Barclay until sold in March 2020 to a Qatari investment company, the Ritz Club struggled to attract a large enough clientele to be able to manage large losses to the few customers it had.

The 200 staff whom worked at the exclusive venue have all been informed at the end of May last year that the club will not reopen from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The casino has been in its current form since 1977 when Mecca Sportsman and Pleasurama leased the basement of the Ritz Hotel and opened in 1978 as The Ritz Club. Since then the ownership has changed hands until in 1997 it was incorporated into the ownership of the hotel by the Barclay brothers.

One former employee said to the iGaming Post: “the article claims that the casino owes customers some three quarters of a million, that is not correct, the majority of that is carried by progressive jackpots on table games, those jackpots were not won but has to be shown as owed as they were not claimed. There are some amounts that are left on deposit and when the club closed tried to contact those customers but without success, they remain on deposit and can be claimed at any time.”