by Mira Patel, News Staff Writer

November 16, 2009

One of the fastest growing sectors of the online gambling industry still continues to be Bingo - both in terms of player popularity and the number of online bingo rooms popping up all over the internet. While there is a large following with the U.S. crowd, unlike the online casino sector, which is dominated by the U.S. market, online bingo is primarily fueled by European players - notably in the UK.

For the U.S. facing crowd, bingo rooms like USA Bingo and others in the World Bingo Network, are taking up the slack in the States, where many European operators choose not to venture anymore. The result is even more competition in the UK and European markets, which is fantastic for the UK bingo player, but not so much for the bingo room just starting out and trying to claim a stake at some of the bingo traffic.

As is the case in the online casino sector, much of an operators success depends on the software platform being licensed. The more established and popular software platforms simply provide brand recognition, as well as access to networked games. From an operators perspective, choosing a branded operator will certainly demand higher start-up and operating costs, but it's the price you pay for quick and easy access to players.

Of all the different UK-centric bingo software providers on the market right now, Virtue Fusion has been one showing up on the OCS radars quite often. With peak players online at approximately 6,000, Virtue Fusion powers some of the biggest names in gaming, including the Rank Group (Mecca Bingo), Will Hill Bingo, Ladbrokes Bingo, Paddy Power, Virgin Bingo and Carmen Media Bingo. In fact, the partnership with Mecca Bingo was just announced, the details of which include giving the Rank Group exclusive rights to provide Virtue Fusion's Snakes and Ladders as a 1 To Go game.

Virtue Fusion, which currently operates out of Alderney and is awaiting a Maltese online gambling license (Malta being one of the premier UK-whitelisted online gambling jurisdictions), also recently launched three more games, including a bingo feature, slot machine and slot hybrid, expanding their portfolio to nearly fifty games.

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