Ladbrokes wants its relaunched bingo service to become the market leader in the UK, the bookmaker’s head of consumer PR, David Williams, has told TotallyGaming.com.
The UK company’s bingo website was transferred to operator Playtech earlier this year, giving customers access to a market with more than 70,000 players and up to 20,000 concurrent users.
Now the site itself has been updated and redesigned, with £3m (€3.8m/$4.7m) and a new SEAT Ibiza car available in prizes between now and the end of the year.
“Bingo is and has always been an extremely popular game in the UK,” Williams told TotallyGaming.com.
“Quite simply, our goal is to become the leading bingo site in the market and we invested a lot of effort and resources into creating a site that meets our customers’ needs and excites them.
“We expect existing and new customers to be genuinely delighted with the improvements we’ve made.”
Williams added: “The relaunch of Ladbrokes Bingo was a ground-up endeavour. We worked hard to improve everything from the site’s visual appeal to layout, navigation and ease-of-use.”
Success in bingo would certainly be worthwhile, with the UK’s market worth £380m in gross gaming yield in 2013 – up 57 per cent from 2009 – according to a Deloitte report.
Ladbrokes has some work to do in establishing its bingo offering at the top of the market.
In its most recent half-year results, released in August, Ladbrokes Bingo had net revenues of £5.2m, down 13.3 per cent on the previous year. This was 6.1 per cent of the company’s total online net revenue of £84.8m, which was down 2.4 per cent year-on-year.
Current market leader Mecca Bingo’s digital offering generated total revenue of £58.9m in 2013-14 with operating profit of £15.9m.
The relaunch of their bingo offering is just one part of Ladbrokes’ plans for the forthcoming year, as the company seeks to improve performance across the board.
Williams added: “We are always busy improving our products and services in order to provide our customers with the best possible gaming and betting experiences.
“As we approach 2015 we are well underway on a journey to revolutionising the Ladbrokes experience for our users across all platforms to satisfy the demand from our customers and attract new ones.”
source : www.totallygaming.com
