According to Gaming Intelligence which has been conducting a series of articles in serious UK successes and the sagas of some of the flops; unfortunately Bingo.com falls into the "flop" category for 2010. They have already been on two software platforms this year, with a change in early 2010 to the Unibet software platform. Now they go onto Virtue Fusion which is a subsidiary of Playtech - after their acquisition of this software developer and network in late 2009.

At the time of the change to Unibet, CEO of Bingo.com said he felt it was the correct decision and is still sticking to his guns regarding it as a transitional phase. UK online bingo players obviously did not feel the same and after the change over to Unibet; company profits in the second quarter of the year were down by a massive 71%. Although Bingo.com has probably one of the best names in the industry; whilst operating off the Unibet platform, players migrated away from the site in droves. The operator was not considered to be UK market focused, as UK online bingo players like to know they are getting good value for money. Promotions, bonuses and scheduled guaranteed jackpot games are what these players are looking for, the site for some stupid reason, did not offer many of these. This flirtation with "almost" disaster has hopefully been diverted with the transition to software which is reputed to be a "sure thing".

Mecca Bingo, William Hill Bingo, Paddy Power Bingo, Bet 356 Bingo and Ladbrokes as well as others all use Virtue Fusion and have seen some substantial success in the UK online bingo arena; can Bingo.com follow suit? By now Tarnie Williams must be ready to see things work at his site. He admits to being tired of seeing seventeen consecutive quarterly losses – we will say one thing for him, he is determined to give it a go!

Bingo.com had two million registered users at the time of the Unibet deal, their rationale for buying into this site was potentially good, but the site has consistently underperformed. Unibet CEO said it was a really long shot, but it was cheap at the price and with such a great domain name, one always expects great things. Hopefully with better management, games and promotional offers, there is some room for improvement. Unibet currently leans heavily on the sports betting sector of the industry as they don't have their own poker or casino sites either.

Bingo.com is also hoping to be well positioned for an opening into a newly regulated and legalized US online bingo industry, and this is what Unibet was hoping for. But then so are a lot of other sites! Should this ever take place, which to some extent is inevitable – Bingo.com offers free bingo games to players in the US already and has a fan-base of three million players which is a very substantial foot in the door. Let's hope regulation happens in the US and that Bingo.com has a better year in 2011.