Britain’s oldest casino Crockfords closes down after 195 years as it blames the lack of high-end tourists coming to London for hurting business

• The Mayfair hotspot employs 100 staff, who are now facing redundancy

Britain’s oldest casino has closed its doors for good as London fails to attract high-end tourists.

Crockfords Casino – best known for its exclusive clientele of aristocracy and royalty – has rolled its last die after more than 195 years of business.

It follows a consultation process about its future, which was launched by bosses last month.

The Mayfair hotspot – owned by gaming group Genting – employs 100 staff, who are now facing redundancy or being moved to other casinos within the group.

Paul Willcock, president of Genting Casinos UK, said closure of Crockfords’ £80 million site was the ‘end of an era’.

Crockfords Casino – best known for its exclusive clientele of aristocracy and royalty – has rolled its last die after more than 195 years of business

Business has slowed since the pandemic while the so-called ‘tourist tax’ (introduced by Jeremy Hunt, pictured) is blamed for putting off wealthy visitors coming to the UK

‘There is a combination of factors which have put high-end London casinos at a competitive disadvantage to other global market places and this has led to an unsustainable future for Crockfords in Mayfair,’ he said.

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Business has slowed since the pandemic while the so-called ‘tourist tax’ is blamed for putting off wealthy visitors coming to the UK.

The casino was established in 1828 by a working-class fishmonger – William Crockford – who later became one of the wealthiest self-made men in England.

It was originally a private members gaming club for society’s most elite, which was located at the fashionable 50 St James Place in London.

Crockfords monopolised on the craze for heavy gambling raging through the 1800s, giving England’s upper crust a sophisticated environment to flutter.

As it grew in popularity, Crockfords Casino later moved to the heart of Mayfair – attracting high rollers from across the globe.

Yet with high stakes, comes high drama. Crockfords made headlines in 2017 when it won a legal battle with poker player Phil Ivey who tried to recover £7.7m of winnings from a game of Baccarat after the casino became suspicious that he could be cheating.

Ivey denied any allegations of misconduct in the strongest terms and he recovered his initial £1m stake.

The casino was established in 1828 by a working-class fishmonger – William Crockford – who later became one of the wealthiest self-made men in England 

But the historic casino has fallen on tough times since the pandemic, which it largely blames on London’s inability to bring in visitors – especially those willing to splash the cash.

This can be partly blamed by the tourist tax, which scrapped VAT-free shopping for tourists in 2021 when the UK left the EU.

Casinos such as The Ritz and The Clermont have both been forced to shut up shop in recent years as London loses out to other gambling hubs across the globe.

High-end casinos in the UK contributed around £150 million a year in tax to the Treasury, as well as generating £188 million for London’s economy and at least £120 million in additional tourism spend in the capital.

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