Online Bingo in 2010: Where is the industry heading to?
Saturday, 26 December 2009 | Written by Rachel Collins
The recent news of Wink Bingo’s acquisition by the 888 group comes only months after another large scale transaction, where Party Gaming bought the Cashcade group, operators of online bingo sites. Does this signals a turn of the industry towards bigger and fewer brands in online bingo?
The last two years have seen a tremendous growth of the online bingo industry and the popularity of the bingo game has risen to new highs. With this trend saw the entry of many new players to the online industry, both completely new operators and veteran online gambling operators that expanded to the bingo market.
The fierce competition saw the operators spending huge funds on marketing and customer acquisition. Now, it looks like the big brand is turning to different strategies in form of mergers and acquisitions, buying the medium brands to increase their market share.
The 888 Group recent buy was said meant to strengthen their presence in the market, currently through the successful 888 Ladies site, to allow them to compete better with the industry giants like Gala Bingo and Mecca Bingo. With the big brands getting bigger and bigger, it will probably won’t be long before smaller brands will find it hard to keep up the competition, and while the recent acquisitions act as a vote of confidence of brand owners in the continuous growth of the online bingo market, it looks like 2010 is going to see the big names like 888 Ladies, Wink Bingo, Mecca Bingo, Gala Bingo Bet365 Bingo and now also Moon Bingo increasing their market share and revenues at the expense of the smaller brands.
What does this mean for the players? Well, fewer brands in any industry means less competition which is usually bad for consumers, but it will take time to see if that is indeed the case, or will this trend act to the benefit of the online bingo players through bigger prizes and payouts.
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