A recent report by BingoPort said that free bingo accounted for 31% of player activity last month while six months ago this figure was at only 3%. Co-founder Scott Logan said that it was a “huge shift in the marketplace” and that the fear is that “players are starting to expect more and more for free, causing a drop in lifetime player values”. He says the growth of free bingo causes a “constant erosion of cash from the real play bingo rooms”.
That does sound like dire news for the online bingo operators, doesn’t it? However, this just doesn’t go along with the latest reports from such big names in the industry as William Hill, PartyGaming and 888 Holdings. These companies have said they expect bingo revenue to rise more than 20% both this year and next year. This is reinforced by data gathered by H2 Gambling Capital, a research company based in Manchester, England.
In the first half of this year, William Hill has seen it’s online bingo revenue skyrocket by 50% and expects to do the same next year. Ladbrokes has announced a 30% increase in online bingo revenue and 888 Holdings has said they expect to increase from the current $40 million annual revenue to over $100 million within the next few years.
This just doesn’t sound like free bingo has hurt the industry to me. It is a highly competitive market and online bingo sites must be aggressive to get ahead of the competition. Free bingo is one of those incentives that attracts new players as well as old to an online bingo site, particularly with the global recession still having its lingering affects.
