A Ballooning Industry and a Government Holding a Pin

The Online Bingo Industry in the UK Will Face More Changes

Further sustainable growth is not impossible despite all the obstacles the industry has to face. The presence of active online bingo sites remains stable and we’re expecting to see more sites open in the second half of 2018 and in 2019, but with the regulatory and financial squeezes, it’s also likely that some of the ‘coming soon’ sites may never see the light of hosting or that more sites, especially owned by individuals, may close in 2018.

With customer retention and account re-activation as the main focus of operators, it’s likely that fewer sites will be opened in 2018 and 2019. We’ve already seen operators lose the no-deposit bonuses and implement new type of welcome offers with no wagering requirements so it’s obvious that the focus is no longer on new registrations which is easy to explain with the small percentage of first-time depositors.

While operators may have breathed a sigh of relief and enjoyed a break from the welcome bonus competition, it’s a thin line between market consolidation and stagnation, as the only new networks expected to diversify the online bingo scene – Mr Q and Yggdrasil are still postponing the launch of their “cutting-edge game-changing” products.

We’ve already seen some of the biggest brands in the iGaming industry fined by the UK Gambling Commission in the beginning of 2018, so we can only expect UK operators to get even more heat by the Commission, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) and other regulatory bodies. In 2017, 888 were hit with a record fine of £7.8 million for failing to protect vulnerable clients.
  

2018 started with William Hill being fined £6.2 million for breaching anti-money laundering and social responsibility regulations, then in March SkyBet was given a penalty package that would see them pay £1 million for allowing self-excluders to open new accounts, and in May 2018 LeoVegas was fined £600,000 for misleading advertisements.

Consensus in the industry seems to be that the Commission will issue further penalties, with some experts going as far as to predict that we may see one of the biggest brands become a scape goat and have their gaming license suspended. Of course, this is merely speculations and we can only wait and see.

In October 2017, the Committee of Advertising Practice, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Remote Gambling Association and the UK Gambling Commission jointly issued a letter that emphasised the importance of existing regulatory frameworks and the need for removing or amending child appealing content from operators’ websites and third-party media like the App Store, affiliate sites, and social media.
  Although the letter didn’t set any clear requirements, it urged operators to hide child-like in nature characters, animations, and product names reflecting or being associated with youth culture behind age-verification wall and remove them from freely accessible space like the homepage of their website and search engine advertising. Game providers will rightly clamp down hard on all operators using their games in the UK, specifically on pre-age verification demo games.
  Considering the graphics and texts on most slot games, some experts predict that somewhere between 30% and 50% of the current slot games could get banned as demo games in 2018. So far, no certain games have been banned but considering the warnings about more fines and the content on already flagged games, it is not a stretch to assume that a list of games banned from demo versions or being generally available to view is in the making.

UK PoC Tax Rising So far, the current UK conservative government hasn’t been exactly gentle on the gambling industry and that coupled with the fact that the current UK Prime Minister introduced the UK point of consumption tax when she was Home Secretary, plus all the regulations and limitations from the Gambling Commission, ASA and CAP could only mean more and tighter controls on bingo operators and affiliates. Some industry experts have even speculated that the PoC tax could increase from 15% to 20%, even 25% in 2019.

Fallout from Brexit The UK’s pull-out from the EU is scheduled to happen by the end of March 2019 and based on the conditions it manages to negotiate, particularly with Spain over Gibraltar, Brexit may have a negative effect on the operators and affiliates in the iGaming and gambling industries in the UK if EU member states decide to restrict or block UK-licensed operators. It’s possible that some other EU member states will start to regulate their markets further and follow suit by introducing stricter regulations, governing advertising copy and encouraging responsible gambling from operators and affiliates.