From Premier League to Evo-Stick League

WhichBingo.co.uk has just undergone a radical redesign. As the net’s largest bingo directory, we pride ourselves in listing every single online bingo site in the UK.

Looking at the directory today there are in excess of 300 different brands out there. Is there another consumer market that also had in excess of 300 different choices? Would you expect to see 300 different types of breakfast cereal on offer at the supermarket? I then fell upon the comparison of football, or soccer for those reading this in the US.

In England there are 92 clubs in the top four divisions. At the top of the pile are world recognised clubs (‘brands’) like Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and, until recently, Liverpool. Underneath these there is an enormous pyramid of professional, semi professional and amateur clubs.

To get to the point where we are comparing around 300 ‘brands’ (ie football clubs) you need to go down to level 8 of this pyramid, to something known as the ‘Evo-Stik League First Division North’.

Currently bottom of this league are a team called Leigh Genesis. Leigh Genesis lost their last home game 0-8 in front of a crowd of 58 people. It so happens that Leigh is in Greater Manchester and their ground is just 16 miles away from Old Trafford, home of Manchester United.

So, we have two ‘brands’ competing in the same marketplace (football) selling the same product (‘come and watch us play’) and geographically in the same location. Are they ‘competing’ with each other? Well, you may argue that the 58 that turned up at Leigh’s CrillyPark may have considered going down the road to watch Premiership football, but conversely the 70,000 that turned up at Old Trafford probably don’t even know of the existence of Leigh Geneis, never mind consider going to the match.

So what has this got to do with the UK online bingo market? My point is that, as with football, in online bingo there are huge brands and there are tiny brands. An online bingo player who plays at the ‘big boys’ sites may not even be aware of the myriad of tiny skin sites that fill the marketplace. For Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool read Tombola, Sun, Foxy, Jackpot Joy. For Leigh … well you can take your pick from the literally hundreds of ‘me too’ skins on the various white-label networks that now exist.

My personal view is that the bingo market now splits into ‘Premier League’ brands competing with each other, medium size ‘Championship’ brands (a mix of big brands that should be doing better – are Leeds United Party Bingo? – and smaller brands doing well) competing with each other and then ‘the rest’.

The big brands have the budgets to appear on TV, the standalone size to generate huge jackpots and the structure to offer top quality player support and promotions. The skins and white labels have no capability to offer any differentiation and thus merge into a mass of grey mediocrity.

And with the market , in my opinion, fast approaching saturation point, how long before there aren’t enough players to maintain the major brands? It isn’t the number of players that will ‘max out’ but the funds they have to play with.

Many online bingo players play at a multitude of sites. There cannot be that many ‘online bingo virgins’ still out there, can there? Therefore 2011’s marketing from the major brands strategically has to be a mix of recruitment and retention, with the emphasis on the latter.