Virgin Bingo Look Set To Become The Dominant Force In The Uk Online Bingo Market

Online bingo has been a world wide phenomenon that has simply exploded into our lives but one has to ask where did it come from and why did it suddenly explode. There are several different opinions about why online bingo has grown so fast but the simple answer is the amount of television advertising that has been shown, the better question is why are the online gaming companies pushing it so very hard.

Being heavily involved in the industry I can remember the birth of online bingo when it was a very poorly performing software that you simply would not have wanted to play on. In those days it was not really seen as an extra revenue stream but rather a method of getting people through the online door of your casino that you might otherwise not have got.

These players could then be cross sold to the casino or poker product. It sounded like a good plan as marketing online casinos and poker rooms was becoming ever harder and bingo was considered by the general public as soft gaming as oppose to casino which was considered hard gaming.

Then something happened. The first online bingo sites developed the communities where players could chat to each other while playing and make new friends. Following this the sign up rate went through the roof. The player numbers were becoming simply huge and the pioneering sites such as Foxy bingo, Bet365 bingo and Jackpot joy had no problem finding the required funds to begin very intensive television advertising.

The growth factor was improved even further by the target audience for the online bingo sites which were women between 20 and 40. This meant the slots to buy on the airwaves were considerably cheaper therefore increasing the number of times the adverts ran. Who has watched UK Living and not seen an advert for online bingo.

So successful was the advertising that Foxy bingo was bought by Party Gaming for 95 million GBP earlier this year. This from a few short years of operating. The online bingo industry has had trouble finding its feet when it comes down to actual profit making with the huge expense of the television campaigns and the relatively low average player value when compared to casino players. It would seen the operators have decided that the best way to increase profit is not to try and increase the amount per player but increase the number of players.

Free bingo is the result of this change in strategy and it seems to be proving quite successful with all companies having run trials and now ramping up their free bingo offering. The thinking is that the game experience will be so enjoyable that any player playing for free will be likely to take part in real money games for the chance to win that little bit extra. Only time will tell if this is the case or not.

There has been one company that while they have been advertising and making a good job of their bingo product have not been where you would expect them to be, Virgin bingo is as you would expect Sir Richard Bransons online bingo offering. It forms part of the Virgin games website and is marketed as bringing all the fun of the Virgin brand to your favorite games.

With such a powerhouse brand they would seem to have been very quiet in the profile building but that is about to change. Now whether they have been sitting back and simply watching the industry develop or not is a question for Sir Richard himself but suffice it to say they are about to get under the skin of all the other operators as they launch a wide reaching television campaign on the 12th October.

Having seen a preview of the advert I have to say it is a good one and uses pure animation and introduces a character called Ricardo, he will no doubt be well received. This marks a turning point for the online bingo industry as such a well known brand steps up its attack with all guns blazing, and yes they have free bingo on offer.

Will free online bingo be the answer to making those huge profits from bingo that the companies need? Well that will take time to find out but rest assured that if Richard Bransons virgin bingo has anything to do with it they will be knocking some of them off those top spots.

The Virgin bingo television campaign will launch on the 12th October.