Playing Bingo Home > Blog & UK Bingo News >

Latest UK Bingo News And Site Additions

Join us for news and stories from the world of Bingo in the UK, as well as to see what interesting stuff is being added to the site. Subscribe for regular updates.

Friday, April 30, 2010

End Of An Era For Playing Bingo

Today marks a sad day for me here at Playing Bingo, and the end of an era. This will be the last news post I can make via my favourite old blogging platform Blogger.com. They foolishly decided to remove the ability for users like me to publish our blogs to our own self-hosted websites. So, from now on there's no more here from blogger.

But fear not, as one era ends, another dawns, and coming soon is a new look blog section to replace this old one. There will be a delay as I have a few other things to sort out in the meantime. In fact, I have some really exciting content lined up for this site that will be a real treat for fans of proper old fashioned bingo halls. Things have been a bit quiet on this blog recently - but I'm planning on doing a lot more when I make these big site changes. Alongside changes here, there's other exciting UK Bingo portal related happenings elsewhere. ;)

So the message is to stay tuned, and in the meantime if you want great retail bingo news then I recommend Bingo Supermarket, and if it's the latest online bingo news you fancy then check out Ballsup Bingo. Here's to the old Playing Bingo blog one final time. Thanks for the memories!

Posted at 1:37 PM | Add your comments [0] | Links |

Monday, April 12, 2010

New Hall History Piece - The Kingston Gala

After a long break, Ian Grundy has returned with another fascinating insight into a grand old bingo hall, illustrated with Ian's wonderful photographs. This latest piece looks at the development of the monstrously huge Kinston-Upon-Thames Gala Bingo hall. The hall started out as a church and was a theatre / cinema for a time before being first a Coral Bingo Club and then bought for Gala. How long the hall remains as a bingo club is unsure though, as despite still trading, the building is up for sale.

Posted at 2:55 PM | Add your comments [0] | Links |

4th Online Bingo Summit 2009 Coverage

Yes, you read that right - coverage from last year's event, now live on the site. Ok, I know this should have been up about 10 months ago, but it's been a busy 10 months and I've only just gotten around to finishing. I thought I'd better get it up ahead of the 5th Annual Online Bingo Summit which is in June. If nothing else, it will serve as a taster of what to expect should you decide to go the event, and if you work in the industry, why wouldn't you?

So, better late than never I say. As to what's been stopping me finishing it, well, I literally got off the train from the London conference and went into full time work part producing my other company's first film. Alongside that I've had a lot of other bingo related work with another company, and all in all it's kept me away from this site. Which is a shame, because I still have lots I want to do here, and there's lots of changes on the horizon. More on that later.

If you'd like to see my coverage of the event, you can read it here. There's also a small photoset over at Flickr. Don't forget, if you are going to attend this year's event, you can still get a £100 off with our promotion code - details here.

Posted at 1:44 PM | Add your comments [0] | Links |

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Virtue Fusion CEO Bob McCulloch On The Online Bingo Summit

Keeping things Online Bingo Summit related, Bullet Business sent over this interview with Bob McCulloch, the CEO of the recently purchased Virtue Fusion, for my money one of the top 3 bingo solutions out there. He talks about the growth in the market, the future of the industry and what makes the event so important.

With the online bingo industry set to yield nearly $2 billion by 2012 the future looks bright for operators in this lucrative segment of the online gaming sector. With so much M&A activity occurring during the late months of 2009 and the first months of 2010, the industry is set for another year of growth and potentially more consolidation activity on the horizon.

Just look at the hugely successful platform and network provider, Virtue Fusion and the very recent news of their sale to Playtech. One message is becoming clearer and clearer as the industry evolves? the big are getting bigger!

Bullet Business asks Virtue Fusion CEO Bob McCulloch to give his thoughts on what 2010 will bring for the industry. "After the developments we have seen over the past few years, it is somewhat inevitable that industry commentators are questioning if the UK market has started to reach maturity" comments McCulloch and continues "It might now be worth hundreds of millions of pounds but there is still room for growth for online bingo. There is certainly more scope for new licensees on the network, though it is likely this will be at the expense of some of the smaller and less creative operators."

McCulloch, who will be participating as a Platinum sponsor at the forthcoming Online Bingo Summit, London in June continues by noting the important factors that will continue to deliver growth in 2010 "As we move into a new decade, there are a number of essential components for success. The first is liquidity, which can only come from a very major network of operators and users ? such as the one we have built at Virtue Fusion. This will grow even further when we combine the Playtech and Virtue Fusion Bingo liquidity pools in the very near future. Companies are also going to have to innovate or else they will undoubtedly be left behind. Bingo will continue to present itself as an attractive and complementary business proposition to online sports book, casino, and poker operators as well as land-based firms too, but they need to be presented with new and interesting products."

Speaking on the importance of creativity McCulloch comments "We are constantly innovating to keep ahead, which is why you have recently seen deals such as ours with Endemol and the launch of our groundbreaking integrated social networking feature, and there are plenty more to come. Playtech are similarly focused on innovation and the deal also brings huge benefits to our network with the largest library of side games in the gaming industry.

Of course striking the right balance between player acquisition and retention is key and McCulloch points out the role that segmentation will play "market segmentation will continue to bring new target groups and partnerships that enable further market growth, but it should not be achieved at the expense of ignoring customer retention. This should be maximised by consolidating and not forgetting about those that already rely on you."

With one eye firmly on the future McCulloch describes the booming potential of the online bingo market. "Despite all the talk of growth and maturity, it's also fair to say that we have only tapped into a very small part of the global bingo market. That said, it is important to tread carefully in newly regulated markets ? and it's also good to have a polished crystal ball! Thanks to our new colleagues at Playtech, we now have the benefit of their expertise and the support of the largest and most sophisticated B2B provider in the industry, making that crystal that much clearer!"

Speaking about the Online Bingo Summit & Awards this June in London, McCulloch says "For us, this is probably the most important of all the bingo exhibitions and conferences. While we participate at many of the others, to varying degrees, the Bingo Summit is the only dedicated conference to online bingo so it provides us with a stage from which we can present our products to the rest of the online industry. We look forward to being here this year and, hopefully, for many more to come."

Posted at 10:08 AM | Add your comments [0] | Links |

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Early Bird Bonus For The 5th Online Bingo Summit

You'll have to excuse the lack of action around these parts recently, there's a couple of big things happening at the moment that are affecting my ability to post here. First up, Blogger dropped a bombshell that they would no longer be supporting FTP publishing to external sites from the end of March. As the blog section of this site relies on it, it means I can no longer publish from Blogger to this site. So, this means I will be busy sorting out a new blogging platform for this site (and the others that are Blogger powered.) It's a lot of work, and I might just fit a long overdue site redesign in as well.

Secondly, the arrival of my second child just last week is going to drastically affect the amount of work I'm able to do for the near future, and it's worth every lost minute of work so no regrets there. Well, that's my excuses and I'm sticking to them. Not to mention the last 8 months has been spent sorting out the work from the feature film I helped produce, you can imagine that I've not been able to give the time I want to my bingo ramblings.

That said, there's my annual little highlight coming up in June, the 5th Online Bingo Summit which is taking place in London on the 8th and 9th at the Victoria Park Plaza. For those of you out there involved in online bingo, be it as operators or affiliates, then this is the essential industry focused event of the year, chock full of great information and discussion.

I jumped out of my lack of action when I noticed earlier that the super earlybird registration price ends on the 4th of March. If this sounds like your cup of tea then registering before the 4th of March deadline could save you £300 on the later prices. Also, I'm able to offer you an additional £100 off the ticket price with the special deal we have with Bullet Business to save Playing Bingo readers money. Simply quote PLAYBINGO when you register to receive the additional £100 off.

The line up is already fleshing out, with free bingo, consolidation in the marketplace, affiliates and liquidity all being areas of interest. Bingo in Europe will once again be explored for those seeking to broaden their gaming horizons. Given the legal minefield that Europe is when it comes to gaming, these sessions are always of interest.

If you're wondering what happened to my report from last year's summit, annoyingly I pretty much finished it on the train home from the summit. However, as I went from doing the summit last June to shooting a feature film, I never got around to finishing it. I'm aiming to get back to it and get it on the site in the next couple of weeks. If you're not already convinced you need to go to the summit, then my overview might swing your opinion. Failing that, the two previous summits are also covered in great detail in our articles section.

Posted at 9:17 PM | Add your comments [0] | Links |

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Playtech Snap Up Virtue Fusion

Online bingo has been rife with takeovers and buyouts recently, and this latest one sees one of the best online bingo providers bought by a wider gaming operator who's bingo offering is far from satisfactory. Virtue Fusion have in the last couple of years become one of my favourite bingo platforms, powering some of the countries biggest bingo brands (Mecca, Ladbrokes and William Hill Bingo to mention but a few.) Their sale to Playtech for £26million will see the bingo focused Virtue Fusion a part of a larger online gaming giant.

Playtech are a London Stock Exchange listed company who are better known for their Poker and Casio software and networks. Whilst they have a couple of notable partners in their existing bingo network (most notably Bet Fred and Totesport Bingo,) it's fair to say that from a player's perspective, their bingo offering is not very good at all and the size of the network is pretty small for player numbers compared to the others.

According to Proactive Investors Playtech will merge the two networks to increase the player pool. If they have any sense, they'll ditch their own platform in favour of the technically and player friendly superior one that Virtue Fusion offers. It seems to be a bit of trend the last year - companies who aren't very good at bingo (888, PartyGaming, Playtech) buying smaller bingo companies that are (Cashcade, Wink, Virtue Fusion.) So far, I've not seen any real issues with the good stuff giving way to the bad, and hopefully this new Playtech takeover will be the same. If anyone from Playtech's bingo arm reads this, then please note. Us bingo players like Virtue Fusion a lot, don't blow it!

Posted at 9:03 AM | Add your comments [0] | Links |

Blog & UK Bingo News - Archive

2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005