While growth has been fragile at best, earnings have gone up 3.4% in the past year, but the £26 million paid in taxes has been tough to grow around. A tax hike of a full 7% has severely changed the way Rank and other similar companies do business and Burke believes this has to be dealt with in order for the industry to grow. While the situation now looks a bit gloomy, experts believe that once the economy is restored to better health, taxes will most likely be lowered to adjust and allow the gaming industry to expand more rapidly as Burke is advocating.

From this sparking point, bingo would go on to become a very popular way for charities and churches to raise money for a huge variety of different causes. Then it would become a popular game to play for money in bingo halls and in casinos around the country. It would spread to the United Kingdom and there it would become even more popular than it ever had been in the US. This set the stage perfectly for the mid 1990’s when the web first came into prominence. Once this occurred, many sites began to crop up offering various online casino games and online bingo finally got its first start online. This proved to be a very smart move by those site owners because the game was wildly popular by the year 2000. Today, that popularity just keeps building and building with a growing demographic of mostly young adult women enjoying the game on a regular basis. In fact, so many millions of people no play bingo online that it has actually become a billion dollar industry. There are hundreds of bingo sites that one can play in and a wide variety of software packages that make the whole gaming process a lot easier for the players. Chat is huge in bingo games and has become a major draw for players who can be found gaming at all times of the day and night.

Ball Runway – This is the part of a bingo ball machine that the ball passes through when it is launched by the ball shooter into the main area of play.

Ball Shooter – A spring loaded device, usually a rubber tipped plunger, in a bingo ball machine which will launch the ball into the play area.

Bingo Board – A board that will display the numbers called during a given bingo game either as a digital read out for online games or via electronic lights in a land based game.

Blackout – Known also as Coverall, this is a form of bingo that requires players to cover the entire surface of the card before achieving bingo. While it is possible to achieve blackout in as little as 43 balls, generally between 50 and 75 balls must be called first.

Caller – An employee or volunteer in a casino or bingo hall that is in charge of announcing the numbers pulled from the ball machine to the players.

Chat Room – An area designated in online bingo game where players can socialize and talk amongst themselves using their keyboards.

Free Space – The square in a bingo card that acts similar to a wild card in a card game. No number is printed on it so players are allowed to cover it without any number needing to be called. Intended to help make completion of pattern easier.

Multiple Winners – When two or more players call bingo at the same time, the cash prize is generally divided up among all the winners.

Mushroom – This term refers to a group of bingo displays that are in the shape of a mushroom. The machinery typically has a wide head and a more narrow, tube shaped base. These machines allow 6 to 8 players to play electronic bingo at any given time.

On – When a player has only one number left on one or more cards, they are referred to as being ‘On’.

On The Way – This is a game that is generally played ‘on the way’ to a game of blackout bingo. Usually played first on the same card that will be used in the blackout game.

Quickie – This is a type of bingo that is played as fast as possible, also known as Speed bingo.

RNG – Acronym that stands for Random Number Generator. This is the software or machine that will randomly pick numbers in order to keep a bingo game more fair in an online setting or in bingo machines.

Shutter Board – These are plastic boards that are reusable and are generally in the 4 x 4 format. The numbers are pre-printed, but can be marked off by closing small shutters over that particular number. Designed to help reduce waste.

The social nature of this game has done a lot to increase its popularity as the British people have always been a social lot and this has lead to many major brands beginning to offer their own forms of bingo over the web. Mega brands like Virgin, Yahoo, MSN and AOL all offer their own unique spin on bingo through their sites and each of them has hundreds of thousands of players. Many love to compete for increasingly larger jackpots and there is certainly no end in site as bingo has become something of a nation past time in the UK today. The biggest segment of bingo players, which might come as a surprise to many, happens to be women between the ages of twenty and twenty five, many of who not only play regularly online while chatting with friends, but who also attend a variety of different themed events in bingo halls across the country. This demographic has fueled exceptionally rapid growth in the industry and experts predict that they will drive it far further as the girls who come up beneath them continue to embrace the game once they come of age. The 24 hour nature of modern bingo has helped provide an entertaining outlet for all players no matter what time of day or night it is and savvy marketers are helping create a fun lifestyle associated with their brands which only means one thing: more players joining in on the fun.

Boss Media – Hailing from the nation of Sweden where it was founded in the town of Vaxjo in 1996, Boss media started out by creating its own Gold Club Casino, but they got so many people wanting to invest in their company by purchasing software that they decided to begin designing for other companies. Soon, they shifted their focus to software packages and have since become one of the biggest software providers in the world for sites that offer bingo and other casino games. They are well known for the fact that they can deliver very well made and totally customized packages for their buyers. Many White Label Gaming sites use this company’s work.

Chartwell Technology – The Canadian company known as Chartwell Technology started out in the city of Calgary, but also has operations in the United Kingdom and Malta. They design and implement a variety of different casino and bingo software packages for different casinos on the web, including Bwin and Betfair. They are known for their extremely savvy sense of design and are regularly called upon to expand a brand’s look and feel so that the company can market it more easily.

Gamesys – One of the most popular gaming companies from the UK, Gamesys has only recently hit the market, starting up in 2001 as an online bingo service provider. They are the company behind JackpotJoy and have given away more than 75 million pounds in prizes since the beginning of their company, making them quite a hit in the bingo world. According to their estimates, the give away a prize several times per minute, averaged. With all their content available through the surfer’s browser they do not have a downloadable software package which has helped them increase market share rapidly. As well as running their own sites, the are white label providers for a number of network sites.

Microgaming – According to Microgaming they are responsible for the first ever online casino website shortly after their founding in 1994. They are based on the Isle of Man and do quite a bit of business in the casino market place, offering well over a hundred different varieties of games in the casinos that they design for the web based market. In addition to Flash based web browser solutions, they also develop software packages which players first download.

Parlay Entertainment – A huge name in the bingo gaming web sector, Parlay powers a number of very important gaming site’s casino software through their bingo software package solutions. In their own words they were the inventors of online bingo and while that may or may not be entirely true depending upon one’s perspective, they do in fact power the sites of Virgin, MSN, Yahoo, AOL ande a number of other online bingo sites.

Playtech – Arriving on the scene in 1999, Playtech is another fairly new company to enter the online bingo gaming world, but they are the company behind the Bingoland Network and thus have a lot of clout in the industry today, being exceptionally popular as far as bingo sites go. They develop a large range of packages for other online bingo sites, as well.

Once all of the information and details have been provided to the site for verification and the account has been funded, it is time to move on to the process of choosing the game that best suits the player’s individual needs. Since there are such a huge range of online casinos and bingo sites on the web right now, there are also a vast number of different game styles to choose from, almost all of which constantly have enough players for quite a rousing game. This means that there are a number of different styles of cards available and while the rules may differ slightly, the overall game is always to fulfill the pattern required, be it a line or a complex pattern, as the numbers are printed up on the player’s screen. There are auto daub features that can help the player, too, by checking off the called numbers on the cards that they have purchased. This normally lets players be able to chat while the game takes place and certainly adds to the fun factor of the game by freeing up player time to socialize. Some games even offer a feature that will highlight the cards closest to bingo so that the player can call it out as soon as its struck. That is really as easy as it gets, bingo is a great way to socialize and couldn’t be easier to play.

Some experts say that it was 1994 when the first offerings of real bingo on the net started by a company called Microgaming, but it is unclear precisely when the first bingo wagering games first set up shop. Today the industry continues to thrive because by the year 2000 there were hundreds upon hundreds of sites coming online and this is largely due to the wild popularity of bingo in the UK. With the added convenience of simply pointing and clicking to play, plus a well defined e-wallet system, bingo grew rapidly through out the first decade of the new millennium until today in the UK alone it is over a billion dollar a year industry that services millions upon millions of players in a wide variety of different bingo games. The fact that players are able to log in and get their fix twenty four hours a day has really improved the scene and given bingo to anyone who would like to play no matter where they might be at the time. The advances in software have made the game so easy that many players think of it as a chat room where they can win money – a huge boost to the industry’s perception in the minds of players world wide. The future of online bingo definitely looks bright and is only expected to grow with time.

90 Ball Bingo
Those who live in South American or European countries will most likely have been exposed to 90 ball bingo as the primary variant offered and the same holds true for both Australia and the United Kingdom, as well. This also happens to be the style of bingo that is most common through sites on the web since the majority of gaming sites today are based in or around the UK where the largest number of regular bingo players now reside. This particular style of bingo makes use of 9 x 3 cards that have 5 spaces for numbers per line. There are 3 rows and 9 columns per card so that each card has 15 spaces for numbers. Columns are numbered in sequences of 10, ranging from 1 to 90. Since the game is actually played in a triple stage format it is considered to be more complex than its 75 ball cousin. The introductory stage of the game starts off with players simply attempting a bingo by completing one line, but then it is on to stage two where those gathered will attempt to go for a two more lines. Finally, it is on to stage three, known commonly as Full House, where the players will attempt to mark off all 15 of the numbers on their card and win the largest prize of the game. This is the stage that the majority of players have been looking forward to because it is generally when the largest prizes are awarded to the winner.

In order to keep the networks running properly and ensure that each site had control over its theme, design and other elements that helped it offer a unique experience to the gamers that logged in, there needed to be software developed and this came about in a form called While Label Gaming software. This is the backbone of the bingo networks and it is what connects all the different sites to the same server so that they are able to host games in their own way. This is terrific for the players, but it also allows the smaller companies to focus on serving their own players instead of lumping everyone into the same pile of players at a giant company where they may not be able to get very good customer service. This is one of the main innovations in online bingo and it is what has allowed the industry to grow so rapidly. Each site in the network gets to decide how it wants to advertise itself and take care of its users, so that there are a huge range of different online bingo brands out there these days, each of them catering to specific types of customers. A number of different bingo software providers have stepped forward to offer these white label solutions and because of that, the number of bingo networks on the web is also growing at a considerable rate with each and every passing day. Bingo networks are here to stay.

The surprising thing about online bingo is the demographic that has fueled the vast majority of its growth is one that experts did not expect at all: women between the ages of 20 and 25. These are the customers who keep the sites afloat and it is suspected that the reason they have been so quick to embrace online bingo is due to the highly social nature of the game. Whether it is 75 ball bingo or 90 ball bingo, the fact is that it is often the chat feature which really gets people involved in the site. Being able to log in at any time and have fun while chatting with one’s friends has definitely spurred the growth of this nascent industry. The fact that most bingo sites can be played straight through the web browser already on one’s computer makes the process very easy, but there are also specific sites that offer downloadable software for users that lets them play in a richer environment. These days, bingo networks help make sure that there are plenty of players in each game so that the jackpots are as big as the dreams of those playing. Only years ago a pot that went as high as a million pounds would have been unthinkable, but in today’s bingo environment it is a reality. That alone has brought a lot of new players into the fold to enjoy bingo over the web.