The report, titled “Bingo – UK – April 2009″, examines the effect of the smoking ban has had on UK bingo halls and how much it has been affected by the economic downturn. It also looks at the extent to which online bingo has supplanted real world trips to bingo halls.

Bingo News has read the full Mintel bingo report and has picked out the following information as particularly interesting to online bingo players:

• The UK bingo hall industry has seen admissions and revenue decline since 2006: between 2006 and 2009, revenue fell by an estimated 26% in current price terms and admissions by 22%.
• Mintel’s consumer research shows that in January 2009, the proportion of players who had stopped visiting clubs due to the recession was 16% while only 10% have changed their spending patterns because of the smoking ban.
• 6% of club bingo players have played online and the proportion experimenting online is growing. “There is now a slow bleed of club players to the online world,” says the Mintel report.
• Gala Bingo and Mecca Bingo control 80% of revenues in UK bingo halls but their online presence is much weaker with an estimated combined 23% market share of the UK online bingo market. Sites like Crown Bingo and Foxy Bingo have established a major market position despite having no real world bingo hall operations.
• The change in the rateable value of bingo halls announced in December 2008 will provide a substantial financial benefit to bingo hall operators, especially Gala Bingo and Mecca Bingo. The backdated settlement, to reflect the introduction of the Gambling Act, will see an English bingo hall with a current rateable value of £100,000 have this reduced to £85,000 with effect from 1 July 2007 and then to £77,500 with effect from 1 September 2007.
• The Mintel report warns that Gala’s withdrawal from the National Game could lead to the break up of the National Game, with potentially devestating consequences for smaller bingo operators.
• The report predicts that online bingo and mobile bingo looks to have the greatest opportunities in the sector, at the expense of the existing incumbents who have major issues in terms of the age and social grouping of their player databases.
• The report suggests smaller and medium sized operators may soon be forced to merge or make strategic alliances in order to maintain their postion in the UK market.

The highly detailed 78 page report is a great introduction to the UK bingo industry for those who are not already involved and looking for a swift guide to the complexities and economics of a fast changing sector.

Bingo UK 2009 is available from Mintel priced £1500 – further information or purchase of the report available from Mintel.

The two day conference, held at London’s Marriot Regents Park Hotel, attracted around 80 attendees from mobile gambling software companies, mobile operators such as Vodafone and Orange, and gambling companies.

But while great strides have been made producing mobile versions of casino games like blackjack and roulette and a huge variety of slots games, developments in bingo are some way behind. Even poker, which in many ways is more complex to programme than bingo, has a playable mobile product, offered by Cecure Gaming.

Various gaming software companies are investigating linking online bingo sites on a mobile phone but they admit that it may take three to four years before the product will be good enough to attract a mass market audience.

Charles Palmer, co-founder of gaming software company mfuse, told the conference that he was developing new casino and bingo products for launch in the second quarter of 2009 but delegates later said they expected his bingo offering to be closer to a keno-style game than the online bingo products offered by most leading sites.

Charles Cohen, chief executive of Probability plc, an AIM listed sofware provider and gaming operator, said that mass market gambling on mobile phones was still some way off. “The public don’t yet know that it is possible to gamble on your mobile phone,” he said, admitting that mobile gaming was roughly five years behind its online competitors.

Most gambling operators at the conference admitted their priority was to get existing customers playing on their mobiles as an extra way of generating revenue. One head of mobile products for a leading High Street bookmaker told Bingo News: “You just need to get your really big customers playing on their mobiles because it increases the lifetime value of that player by two to three times. What is really amazing though is that they are not gambling on their way to work or in the office when the firewall blocks them. Most of the gambling is done on their mobiles when they are lying on the sofa watching telly and they can’t be bothered to get up and sit at their computer.”