Two winners were widely accepted as being reasonably fair within the industry but most bingo insiders were left baffled by the decision to award Playtech the title of Best Bingo Software.

One bingo software rival said: “I could name six bingo software companies with better software than Playtech. They have hardly any licensees and their product is obviously not competitive in the market. To be frank, the judges must have been smoking something pretty strong to come up with this verdict.”

They added: “It’s a shame because it definitely detracts from the overall credibility of the awards”.

The other winners in the CAP awards for bingo were Jackpot Joy/Market Ace for Best Bingo Affiliate and Bingo Port for Best Bingo Affiliate. Both of these awards were widely considered to be reasonable within the bingo industry and a fair reflection of the hard work put in by both sites over the past year.

The event will also see the 2nd Annual Online Bingo Industry Awards on the evening of June 16.

Speakers already lined up include:

Mark Blandford, CEO, ValHala Investments, UK
Simon Collins, Founder, Cashcade (Foxy Bingo, Bingo Scotland, Mirror Bingo, Think Bingo)
Dominic Mansour, CEO, Bingos.co.uk
Angus Nisbet, Head of Gaming, Blue Square/Rank/Mecca Bingo
Chris Gorring, Online Gaming Consultant, former Head of Bingo Operations, Jackpot Joy
Phil Fraser, Founder, Which Bingo
Catriona Campbell, Founder Foviance
Bev Byrne, UK Community Director, Game Village
Warwick Bartlett, Partner, GBGC
Stuart McCarthy, Head of Bingo, SkyBingo
Justina Cruickshank, MD, Marmalade
Jess Luthi, Affiliate Program Advice
Raj Ramanandi, Affiliate BingoBase
Steve Cook, Head of Sales & Marketing, NYX Interactive
Perry Malone, CTO, Parlay Entertainment

The Annual Bingo Summit has for the past three years been the best attended conference for the European online bingo industry and promises to be even better this year, especially as more than a handful of people will know about the existence of the Online Bingo Industry Awards more than two hours before the event starts.

Tombola used to run The Sun newspaper’s bingo operation but following a fallout with Sun parent company News Corportation in September 2008 they now run their own bingo site, which has an estimated 10% of the UK market.

Their affiliate programme now allows partner sites to earn up to 50% of net gaming revenue from players they sign up. Affiliates earn 35% for £0 to £750 generated in revenue, 40% for £751 to £1500 generated in revenue, 45% for £1501 to £3000 generated in revenue, and 50% for £3001+ generated in revenue. However players are only allocated to affiliates for a period of 12 months, unlike the more common lifetime value of player deals that many bingo sites offer. Net gaming revenues are essentially defined as player losses minus a 10% fee to cover Tombola’s costs of financial processing, chargebacks and player verification charges.

Affiliates also have the option of a CPA structure, from £25 per player up to £35 per player if you sign up more than 50 players per month.

Tombola’s bingo affiliate programme runs on Income Access software. The company’s press release on their new affiliate programme was sent out on December 3rd for a December 1st launch and include a link to a non existent affiliate page (they can’t work out how to spell programme), so affiliates might want to wait a while before signing up while they iron out the initial problems.