During the Bingo Summit last week, a debate Chaired by Leigh Nissim of G-Tech discussed the issue of many sites offering free bingo.  Many operators firmly believe there is definately a place for a free bingo offering but some bingo websites are going too far with it and spoiling the enjoyment of the game for the players that like to spend money.

Last year many sites were offering play for free and win for free promotions but this approach is not sustainable and could cause the indusrty to go into decline by giving the end user an expectation of free bingo rather than a loyalty or trial bonus.

Simon Hannah, a well respected bingo operator who has seen the decline in the cannibalisation of land based bingo with free offerings can see the online sector heading the same way and now is the time to act and think seriously about how free bingo offerings are controlled before jumping on the free bingo bandwagon.

Wayne Howe, also on the panel argued that he felt the place for free bingo was to use it as a tool to get people to try the game for low prizes and introduce them to pay to play sites.  There was a resounding agreement that sites should try and segregate the differences between free and pay to play to make the games much more attractive to players that want to stake real monay after a trial basis.

Tombola recently offered free bingo to their players but this is only offered to those that have staked and played for real money on other cash games.  At the moment some of the bingo sites that offer free bingo to everyone indiscriminately could see that loyal paying players end up subsidising bonus and free bingo hunters and will either make choices to do the same and not play with their own money and wait for a free offering or give up on the game altogether.

Bingo Supermarket has many sites that offer sign up bonuses and trial money sites but do not endorse the heavy play for free sites as this will inevitably lead to a much lower quality of bingo experience.  Two sites that are quite strict on the free bingo offerings are Tombola and Bingo Live 365, in Bingo Supermarket's experience these sites have some of the most loyal players on the internet who feel they get true value for money.  The operators of these sites both coincidentally have numerous years experience in the UK land based bingo industry.

Last year, the emergence of Cheeky Bingo came about, but very quickly the company behind the product at Cashcade have turned their attentions back to the orginal Foxy Bingo brand.