The resurgence in online bingo

Lillian Grey, BingoSites.net Head of Content, says bingo is thriving and players can exploit their success to boost player growth and retention over the past few months, online bingo attendance has been on the rise in the UK and that trend looks likely to continue.

Big name operators such as PlayOJO, which recently introduced PlayOJO bingo, have jumped on the increasing potential offered by the vertical bingo. From the start of the year, the vertical has already seen a raft of new brands joining the fray, including Mint Bingo, Bingo All Stars and Dinky Bingo all looking to claim a share of the booming market.

For several factors the market appeals to retailers, from driving increased interaction and growth with existing players to engaging brand different markets and increasing cross-selling.

In markets such as the UK, the regulatory environment is also pushing players to consider adding bingo to their game portfolios because it is less bonus-led and is played with lower stakes.

But there are also obstacles where opportunities arise and operators face a challenging environment where they will have to put their money where their mouth is to survive. Below, I'm talking about why operators should try releasing bingo goods, some of the obstacles they'll have to leap over and they should make sure they're transparent.

Members trained and ready to play bingo: the bulk of online casino players have a player pool that is prepared and ready to play bingo. When OJO launched its bingo platform, 25% of existing players moved to other brands for bingo games.

This presented an crucial incentive for the company to keep players longer, boost brand loyalty and dramatically grow its wallet share – something other operators could look to emulate.

If they don't, it's not only on the money that players invest on bingo somewhere that they miss out, but there's a big chance that the competing brand bingo will lure them away for good. Adding bingo also helps operators to theoretically increase their player base and reach new audiences, particularly females ages 35 to 55.

This is a profitable market in terms of cost per purchase, loyalty to a brand and other casino games, particularly slots, due to the cross-sell potential. Bingo is best matched with healthy gaming initiatives: as laws and legislation in markets such as the UK begin to intensify, bingo gives players a platform that is more associated with responsible gambling efforts.

Unlike online slots and sports betting, when it comes to enticing players to sign up for a bingo company, bingo isn't as much a bonus led, and incentive T&CS are less restrictive and troublesome.

For starters, delivering a welcome package with a deposit match bonus in excess of 100% plus a large number of free spins is not uncommon for an online casino. Both pieces are typically subject to high wagering conditions – often in excess of x65 – which sometimes contributes to players wagering significant sums to obtain bonus winnings as currency.

On the other hand, bingo has welcome deals such as "deposit £10 and get £20" to spend on wagering-required bingo tickets usually between 4x and 10x. Then you have the discrepancies between player stakes and bets – online slot players will wager upwards of £100 a turn whilst bingo games pay as little as £0.05 with the UK government and the Gaming Commission looking more closely at making a raft of reforms, including enforcing stake caps, bingo would be less affected by the tightening of laws.

Bingo provides lots of cross-selling potential: operators introducing bingo to their service portfolio would also benefit from the massive cross-selling possibilities that emerge when first meeting bingo players.

Bingo players are much easier to recruit than casino and slot matches, but a large proportion goes on to play slots and table games until they know the place they're playing at. If you look at high-performance online bingo sites matches, their worth does not come from their play on bingo but through their play on slots.

All the retailer needs to do is cross-sell them efficiently. Bingo also helps operators to diversify their player base, especially for online sportsbooks which appear to skew towards a higher percentage of male players.

Bingo again helps them to do this at a significantly cheaper cost of CPA compared for other verticals like casino and liver dealer. Don't believe bingo is an easy win: although extending into the vertical bingo offer enormous upsides, operators do not see it as an easy win – bingo is competitive and must deliver a top-rated service in order to survive.

Many who have built their name in other verticals like casino and sport will know what this means, but they need to be aware of how the tastes and aspirations of bingo players vary.

This covers bonusing schemes, loyalty and incentive systems, the bingo culture element and of course how players are first sold to. Yet those who have it right will be able to capitalize on the boom of online bingo and fuel profitable growth at a time of growing instability for the broader sector.

Author bio: Lillian Grey is Head of Content at BingoSites.net and is considered a pioneer in dreaming about all things bingo online.