Online Bingo on the Downturn

by Pat Levey

Is the game of online bingo on the downturn? Over recent years we have seen land based bingo clubs experience a downturn in customers passing through their doors, which in return has led to lots of our much loved halls closing down.

We have also seen quite a free online bingo sites close their virtual doors for the last time over the past few months – which does beg the question, is the game of online bingo also on the slide?

A number of factors has been blamed on the demise of bingo clubs, the smoking ban, economic climate and unfair VAT charges to name just a few. It has to be said that the smoking ban did have a major impact on (people playing at bingo clubs) and although they have tried to combat this by building outside smoking areas, it is just the inconvenience of it all which has still put some people off.

The smoking ban did not really affect online bingo sites, because as this game can be played from your home you can still smoke, eat, drink play bingo in your PJ’s whatever you want. In fact you could say land based bingo clubs loss in this area was online bingo sites gain.

However it does seems some bingo sites are starting to feel the pinch and this could also be down to a number of factors. The state of our economy could be one and the fear of a double dip recession could be another, plus there are just so many sites on the net now (players choice) of where they can play has gone through the roof.

So where there was only a handful of online bingo sites to begin with, this is certainly not the case anymore. You can see just how hard bingo companies are striving to  pick up new customers through the amount of online bingo TV advertisements we are seeing. It just seems you cannot switch on the telly anymore without being greeted by some sort of bingo advert of another and these have even extended to (sponsorship deals) on our favourite shows such as Emmerdale, where bumper ads for Tombola are show at every single commercial break.

We don’t think the game of bingo is up for all online sites just yet, but the way things seem to be heading only the very best will survive.