Online Bingo Body ‘Could Benefit Users’


LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM–(Marketwire – Sept. 21, 2010) – The Bingo Association represents the needs and views of land-based bingo clubs, but what about online bingo? Individuals may benefit if the online bingo community comes together to form an association, however, an umbrella body isn’t likely to happen.

Bingo Supermarket, a UK bingo news provider, believes that land-based bingo and the Internet game are miles apart, even though the style of the games and rules are very similar. The formation of an umbrella body is unlikely due to marketing, governing legislation, taxation and promotional strategies.

Another consideration that has to be taken into account is that most online operators are based abroad, with low levels of governing legislation and taxes. With so many online bingo sites, they have to evolve quickly in order to enter the highly competitive market and need to be maintained properly in order to survive.

Therefore, software and platform providers would make up a large portion of any online association that forms, as they fulfil a very important role of the output. There is also a higher risk when playing online bingo as the chances for fraud and scams are higher.

Mark Bennet, a writer at Bingo Supermarket, pointed out that online gaming needs to be legislated to some degree because of this fraud. He adds that Bingo Supermarket has published a number of stories about online bingo fraud in the past few months and says that “any joint association would therefore find themselves dealing with conflicting goals.”

Bennet observed that there has been a lot of talk about creating a body but so far nothing has come of it, as areas such as software and platform providers would need to be discussed.

According to Deloitte, the total contribution to the country’s economy from the British betting industry is £6 billion in gross value added tax. A large portion of this is due to bingo, both online and offline. Therefore, an association is surely needed to maintain this amount, or better yet, improve it.


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