In industry news, online bingo operator St Minver has announced that the company is no longer connected with Parlay Entertainment. St Minver will now be using it’s own in house developed software solutions. The news will no doubt come as a blow for Parlay, who consider St Minver one of it’s biggest customers. The announcement came during the recent European iGaming Conference, confirming many industry rumours prior that St. Minver may well consider breaking it’s ties with the software company.
The new software solutions will confirm the wishes of St. Minver’s parent company, GTech G2 gaming group, in focusing their efforts in house in order to maximise profits for the company. G2 is alleged to have spent millions in developing St. Minver and it’s sister company Boss Media through a series of acquisitions to strengthen it’s online gaming arm. The company has recently acquired a series of companies connected to sports betting, such as Finsoft and Dynamite Idea. The latest move comes as GTech G2 president Mr Atul Bali confirmed the companies wishes to use St. Minver and Boss Media together in order to emerge a market leader in the gaming sector in terms of product innovation and services, with the aim to sell St. Minver products to a number of existing bingo providers. St Minver already has a large base in bingo, providing software for a few of the top bingo sites in the UK, with an estimated 80 bingo partnerships. By consolidating the services on offer, the company looks set to become a major network in 2010.
G2 recently introduced their newest product, the Bingo 2.2 software, with HemBingo.com became the first bingo site to use the upgrade. Bingo 2.2 allows bingo sites to maximize jackpots in bingo rooms through its linked games and multi currency functionality. The new software also offers the option of multilingual mini games, allowing cross continental operators, particularly in the ever expanding European markets, to capitalise further on the growing success of online bingo. This multilingual functionality will also be available in slots, table games, pokers and scratch cards. The software will be updated quarterly and new features will be added.
Parlay Entertainment on the other hand admitted that they are experiencing a massive decline in revenues for the first half of 2009 because of St Minver’s decision. With fierce competition from other bingo software providers and an increasingly competitive market, the last thing that Parlay or any bingo software company would want is to see one of their largest clients walk away. Unfortunately, as the online bingo world continues to balloon thanks to increasing levels of customership, it seems like the times are a changing behind the screens in online bingo.
