seen online bingo as an acceptable means of deriving revenues from their customers, whereas they would not necessarily have considered poker or casino games in the same light. Search engine Ask Jeeves, for example, has its
AskBingo.co.uk on the St Minver software and even the Daily Mail, which is a UK newspaper fiercely critical of anything gambling related because of the “damage” it does to society, has its own
mailbingo.com room in the Coffee Break page on its website.
Adding bingo to its suite of online services also helped e-gaming firms broaden their appeal to new customers. The “typical” sports betting or poker customers tend to male rather than female, whereas the reverse is true for Bingo. This was important for companies which were restructuring and searching for new sources of revenue in the post-UIGEA fallout. 888 Holdings, for example, launched its
888ladies.com bingo site in February 2008.
networking concept and players can create a profile which incorporates a personal blog, photo page, forum, and the ability to
link to friends’ profiles (and see when they are playing at the same time as you). Live bingo is an inherently social activity and this has combined neatly with the current trends in consumers’ Internet behaviour. Bingo also has the advantage that it is a very easy game to understand. It requires no skill to play or large amounts of time to be spent in improving your play (as in the case of poker). Indeed, many players of both live bingo and the online version see the activity as entertainment rather than gambling.
The perception of bingo as entertainment or a “softer” form of gambling has certainly helped Bingo’s growth online. Companies not involved in the gambling industry have
All of this means that online bingo revenues have grown rapidly in recent years. In research for its Interactive Gambling Report, GBGC calculated that global Internet bingo gross gaming yield (stakes minus customer winnings) rose from US$ 325 million in 2004 to pass US$ 1 billion by 2007. By 2010 this figure was approaching US$ 2 billion. By 2013 GBGC forecasts that global Internet Bingo revenue will be US$ 3.3 billion. At present Europe is the largest region for online bingo. This is due both to the popularity of the game in European markets (compared to the likes of Asia and Africa) and the regulatory situation being generally more permissive than then Americas. Of course, online bingo is no more immune to the regulatory battles than other e-gaming products. In the UK online bingo is subject to the 15% remote gaming duty, which means many firms choose to target the market from lower-tax offshore jurisdictions. Spain is another important market for online bingo and, until now, has not had a licensing regime for Internet gambling. But an online gambling Bill has been passed by Congress in April 2011 and will go forward to the Senate. The Bill includes a 25% gross profits tax for gaming, which is higher than
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