Online Bingo – The Only Way Up?
Online bingo players have never had it better. With all the new bingo sites popping up nearly every day, the competition is as hot as ever. As a result, online bingo players have a wide diversity of choice when it comes to selecting where to play. However is this good for the bingo industry in general?
New sites without player liquidity try and attract players by offering big bonuses, sometimes even reaching 1000% on initial deposit. Even though this is good for the players it’s not for the site. Just like all the new sites being launched an equal amount seem to be shutting their door. Lately we have seen sites like Bunny Bingo and all the Interactive Playnet sites closing. There are rumors floating around that another big online bingo network is also facing serious financial difficulties. This could affect more than 20 well known bingo sites.
The rush to quickly attract players to a site by offering huge bonuses seems not to pay off in the long term. We have seen sites like Jackpot City Bingo start off by offering £25 free with no deposit required. They soon removed that promotion. Along with many other sites, Wink Bingo also announced it will be stopping its no deposit bonus offer. So it does seem that bingo operators are finally realizing that offering big bonuses and no deposit offers doesn’t really pay off.
So where does this leave the bingo industry? It seems that unless a bingo site is backed by a very big investment or a big operator it stands no chance of survival in the ever increasing competitive bingo market.
The few companies that seem to dominate the industry are Playtech with its recent acquisition of Virtue Fusion, Dragonfish, Gamesys and Bingo Entertainment. Nearly all new bingo sites that are being launched are operating under one of those networks or using software licensed from them. Tasty Bingo and Bingo Hollywood are the latest additions to the Dragonfish family, Titan Bingo on Playtech, Heart FM Bingo and Caesars Bingo on Gamesys. Bingo Entertainment also announced it will soon be launching Gina Bingo targeting the UK bingo market.
However, we have also seen a steady move away from the network based bingo model. More and more sites are going it alone. Moon Bingo was the first major name to go standalone, Titan Bingo and now GameOn Bingo will be going it alone. This offers a much greater freedom for each site to set its games and special promotions. This increases competition between the sites and offers greater diversity for the players in choosing where to play. It must be noted however, that even though the games and promotions offered by independent sites may differ the software is more or less the same as there are much less software providers than there are operators.
The bottom line however is whether or not there is sufficient player liquidity to support all these independent site. Even though more and more internet users are discovering the joys of online bingo and more international markets are opening up, the increase in competition will mean the need for greater investment and funding. In the business world this usually has the effect of a few major brands dominating an industry and as far as the bingo world is concerned it does already seem apparent which these companies will be.