If you start playing online bingo and find yourself moving across a couple of sites, you may experience a mild case déjà vu. Step onto one site, and although it doesn’t perhaps have the same name or same homepage, you may find that in the lobby, things start to look a little familiar. It’s not that you are seeing double as such – it’s just you’ve happened across two sites in a bingo network.

With estimates of the number of online bingo sites stretching well into the 500 mark, it’s perhaps no surprise that some online bingo operators would partner up. After all, there are only so many online bingo games out there – and only so many players that will be able to play at them. So in the most simple terms, a bingo network is made up of sites that agrees to partner with each other, sharing their pool of players.

A huge proportion of online bingo sites in the UK operate on a bingo network of some sort, with standalone or proprietary sites the exception rather than the norm. And once you start delving into who shares what, things can get increasingly complicated.

With this in mind, we’ll be addressing and unpicking the web of online bingo networks; looking at what they are, why there are so many – and which ones are worth your time.

Let’s start with looking in a little more detail at what a bingo network really is.

What is a Bingo Network?

In simple terms, a bingo network is a collection of online bingo sites that decide to share games and space across the network. To understand this a little more, it’s important to make a distinction between the front end of a bingo site, and the back end.

1.1 Front end of JackpotJoyBingo

A front end is basically what you see when you land on a bingo site – so the design of the homepage, the promotions page and so on. In industry terms, this is called the skin – so when you hear talk of re-skinning a website, it means the site has undergone a bit of a superficial makeover.

Lobby of JackpotJoyBingo – part of the Gamesys back end.

The back end of the website is the software that website runs on. So for example, if you use a WordPress blog, the back end of your website is provided by WordPress, With online bingo sites, the main area that sites will share their resources is through the software they use to power their online bingo games.

Which means once you’ve inputted your details and signed in to your account and found the lobby, you’ll be using a particular type of bingo game software.

So let’s say you play at bingo site A, site B and site C, who all happen to be on the same bingo network. When you sign in to any of these, you’ll notice that their respective lobbies are almost identical, with the same number of rooms and players in them.

The idea is that Site A, Site B and Site C all act as a type of portal to a bigger bingo space shared between the three, where players and games are exactly the same. This is also known as White Label Gaming, where basically, each site is it’s own label to the same end product.

The Benefits of Online Bingo Networks

The number of sites operating on an online bingo network suggests there must be plenty of benefits involved. Check out the following reasons for a quick overview of operator benefits:

a)    Liquidity

b)    Start up costs

c)    Market share

a) Liquidity

The reasons are all pretty much interlinked, but we’ll discuss them separately anyway. Liquidity basically means how much money is coming in and out at the same time – so how much an operator has to play with.

From the network owners’ point of view, being linked to ten sites that funnel ten players into their product means 100 players, something that might be easier to achieve than getting those 100 players from one site alone.

b) Start up costs

This is more related to the operator of the bingo site itself – signing onto a bingo network reduces plenty of costs and so allows plenty of new bingo sites to enter the market without having to invest too much.

If your back end is taken care of by a network, then all you have to focus on is making the front end look nice – and considering the development costs of creating bingo games aren’t particularly cheap, it allows new competitors to add their offerings to the table in a cost and time effective way.

c) Market Share

Linked to the idea of liquidity is the market share an online bingo network can generate.

This can be calculated as the proportion of total players that play at sites run by an online bingo network. So an operator of an online bingo network that has five sites using it’s software and back end will find more users – and so a greater market share – are actually coming into their bingo rooms.

When you think about these factors, it’s easy to see why there are so many networked bingo sites around – particularly as online bingo is an industry that still promises expansion opportunities.

And whilst Operator benefits are all well and good, the question is: how do online bingo networks benefit players?

Player Benefits

It’s easier perhaps to think of some of the negative points of online bingo networks, particularly from a player’s point of view and we’ll come back to them later. However, there are some advantages.

Bigger Games:

Firstly, a player that plays at a networked online bingo site will have access to bigger games, as there is more liquidity in a networked room, due to players coming from multiple sources.

Like we said – if you have a room with 100 as opposed to 10 players, the jackpot will be bigger, the chat will hopefully be livelier and as a player, you are more likely to have a good time.

Software consistency and innovation:

Although it is perfectly valid to bemoan the lack of originality and the feeling of ‘same old, same old’ at networked online bingo sites, there are upsides to using a network. Software issues are dealt with by a company that knows what it’s doing, often leading to less kinks in the system than at a similar sized standalone site.

And when it comes to software innovation, some online bingo network providers are able to use the extra money from selling their services on to invest in better games for their users.

A great example of this is the appearance of big name games on online bingo sites on the Virtue Fusion network, which offer franchised games like Deal or No Deal, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and so on.

Likewise, Gamesys’ partnership with gaming provider PopCap offers up unique bingo versions of online favourites like Bejewelled Blitz – a move possible due to the extra funds in Gamesys’ coffers.

Of course, none of these benefits are without a downside – so what negative effects do online bingo networks have on players?

The Downsides of Online Bingo Networks:

Primarily, the biggest complaint is the overcrowded nature of networked sites. Because there is a pool of players coming from multiple sites, games can often be crowded – and what you make up for in big jackpot, you lose in the odds of actually winning it.

Real Choice?

Another frequent complaint is the lack of transparency over these networks. Because each site has the chance to skin their site accordingly, what looks like a totally unique and original online bingo site can turn out to be a carbon copy of another – giving a user a false sense of choice.

Although it is estimated that there are around 500 bingo sites out there, some 90% are generally networked in one way or another. And when you filter that down based on the number of networks in operation, it seems that although there is a superficial amount of choice, the reality is often different.

It’s easy to spot this cookie-cutter syndrome with some sites on the huge Dragonfish network (we’ll come back to the networks themselves later). Take the following example of Bingo Fabulous and Brits Bingo, both on the Dragonfish network.

Although the two homepages have a different look and feel, you’ll find the same content when you hit the promo page – that’s even before you log onto your account and enter the same shared lobby.

Sign up issues and multiple account problems

A final user frustration is that some networks have unfair rules regarding players who want to sign up to multiple sites on a network. Some networks will require you to sign up to one site only, whereas others will let you sign up to multiple sites.

The problem with multiple sign ups is if you ever have a problem with one site, you may find yourself in a dispute with all the other sites on that network.

Often this isn’t just to do with White Label Sites, but sites owned by the same parent company or operating on the same license.

Players at some Cassava sites have found that a ban at one site has led to bans across the board. It’s another thing for players to keep in mind, particularly if they haven’t paid attention to the finer print.

Should I play at a networked bingo site?

The whole world of online bingo networks can also be a confusing one, with many different types of networks that are off-putting to untangle, particularly if you are a player.

Some sites will have some shared rooms and some standalone rooms, some sites will only have networked rooms, some sites will run different promotions to others on the network whilst sharing others and some sites will run on similar software with rooms that are just open to players on that site.

In short, there is so much variation from network to network and site to site that sometimes, it is hard to pinpoint exactly which sites are what – but that doesn’t mean a player should avoid networked bingo sites completely.

Standalone sites are often standalone because they have a big enough player base to leverage. Which means some of the problems of a networked site, like overcrowded rooms, will still follow you to a standalone site. It’s not a case of being dogmatic and choosing to play at one or the other – but finding bingo sites that you like, full stop.

Awareness is always key and by having a scout around, players can sometimes easily establish which sites are networked, even if they don’t perhaps explicitly say so.

So what indicators are there that a site is networked?

Ways to spot a networked site:

We’ve already mentioned, you can get a sense of whether a site is networked or not by comparing lobbies or promotion pages. You can also tell the network a site is on when you login via the navigation bar on your browser:

Another tip is to look at the bottom of the homepage, where you’ll find payment types offered. Alongside these icons, you can find badges that will sometimes tell you whether the site is part of an online bingo network, as demonstrated below.

And perhaps the most longwinded approach is to check the terms and conditions of each site. However, to help out a little, we’ve compiled a brief overview of some of the biggest online bingo networks out there.