Bingo and gaming industry publication EGaming Review (EGR) have announced their nominees for the Bingo Operator of the Year category at the EGR Awards. And for us, we have to extend a huge WTG to our favourites Wink Bingo and Cashcade for making the shortlist of six!
Cashcade, the owner of big bingo brands like Foxy Bingo, Think Bingo and Cheeky Bingo are also in competition with Tombola, re-igniting some summertime rivalry between the two over who deserves the top bingo spot in UK players’ hearts!
Back in July, it was reported that Cashcade were using data from online bingo portal BingoPort, which showed that Foxy hosted around 2,500 daily users in the three months prior to June 2009, giving them around 23% of the market. Not impressed with this display of prowess, Tombola countered, using other figures from Hitwise and other figures from BingoPort to show they had more paying customers than Cashcade! Sounds like a bit of a bingo squabble to us, but no doubt both operators will be eager to try and find some way of cementing their status as the best bingo operator out there. And what better way than a gong that proves you are Operator of the Year!
In an attempt to remain diplomatic, we have to say we are big fans of bingo here first and foremost, and think the nominations themselves should prove that everyone is a winner! But that said, the battlelines will no doubt be drawn – Cashcade have managed to increase the number of bingo networks they run to eight, with the recent launch of numerous Foxy spin offs as well as the relaunch of Think Bingo Cosy to Little Big Bingo, and of course, creating the pioneering Cheeky Bingo, the first free to play, win for real site. And seeing as Cashcade spent most of the summer rehoming to PartyGaming following a well reported buyout, and have managed to spend a whopping £6m in offline marketing campaigns… it’s been a busy year for them! What’s more, with the financial backing of gaming giant PartyGaming, we can surely expect to be seeing a lot more of the Cashcade family over the next 12 months.
But that’s not to say the others aren’t in with a shot. Included on the list are the Tombola Bingo network, who have managed to come from nowhere and carve out a sizeable chunk of the UK Online Bingo market as their own since relaunching in August 2008. And we are more than pleased to see Wink Bingo making the shortlist, having spent much of the year coming up with what we think are some of the best bingo adverts out there, including some high-profile sponsorship deals including All Star Family Fortunes, The Cube and Harry Hill’s TV Burp. As a result, Wink Bingo has most certainly gone primetime in the online bingo world, growing from a four room bingo site in February 2008 to a bingo giant in it’s own right, complete with it’s own social network (WinkMe), a great bingo community and a staggering 20 regular and 19 special games rooms! Seems like the guys at Wink and GlobalCom who run the Wink Bingo site should be celebrating just realising how far they have come!!
The nominees were decided based on market share, advertising spend and innovation and visibility in terms of the brand. Things like charity work and unconventional marketing deals such as sponsorships were also given weight, with EGR finally whittling the hundreds of bingo operators out there down to their final six! Other nominees include Ladbrokes Bingo, William Hill Bingo and Gamesys, all of which have made impressive progress in capitalising on the boom in online bingo players. For those of you eager to know who EGR think is the best – you’re going to have to wait until the 30th November… but don’t worry, we will definitely keep you updated on this one!!
