2021 - A Year in (Bingo) Review

What Happened in 2021? You’re About to Find Out!

Another year come and gone and 2021 has been a year of ups and downs for most of us. There have been some cracking bingo promotions and wins plus, on the other end of the scale, there have been some truly unbelievable moments. Go grab yourself a cuppa and a few biccies and settle in as we bring you the best and bad points of bingo in 2021.

Off to a Great Start

Tombola introduce faster withdrawals for Visa Debit customers. Instead of waiting up to 72-hours to receive withdrawals, payments now take on average just 90-minutes to process! This feature is only available to players who deposit via Visa Debit, what with all withdrawals being processed back to the funding method that was last used to credit the account. And while on the subject of Tombola, the founder Phil Cronin, decided to sell the business to Flutter Entertainment in a deal set to be worth £402million!

Our exclusive From the Players for the Players project was launched, bringing the LBB community the latest information on the bingo brands they love! Instead of just reading what a bingo site ‘claim’ to offer, we decided to send in a team of expert reviewers to find out exactly what’s on offer, and this is achieved by making a real money deposit and withdrawal. We’ve discovered some details that are real eye-openers over the last couple of months, including one where an operator states bonuses can be refused to eliminate wagering requirements, only for our reviewer to be told that the bonuses come as standard! Now that one certainly makes for an interesting read! 

Buzz Bingo introduce new 10-minute jackpots. Have you heard of the hourly must drop jackpots by Red Tiger Gaming? Well, these are those, only a winner will be guaranteed every 10-minutes instead of every hour! And guess what? They’re only guaranteed at Buzz Bingo! Three jackpot icons landing will ensure you win one of the three available jackpots – the lowest is worth a minimum of £100!

We brought you news on probably the luckiest bingo player ever to exist – sweet-cucumber, after she had 6 major wins in just a 4-year period! The 50-something bingo dabber had amassed more than £80K from playing at Mecca Bingo, the biggest win was £51K from just an 18p stake! Needless to say, the bragging post on their Facebook page went down like a bucket of cold sick with many calling it a “fix”.

The Not So Good News

The UKGC handed out more fines with the largest of £6m ($8.2m) going to Casumo for a breach of its anti-money laundering rules. Other firms to be fined included Buzz Bingo (£780K), White Hat Gaming (£1.3m) and another for £5.85m handed to Daub Alderney for current and historic findings. The UKGC have recovered over £100 million in penalty packages since 2017/18 and revoked 10 operator licenses, and that number does not include those who took the decision to surrender their licenses before investigations could be completed.

An unlucky pair scooped £4million on an instant win but instead of being able to live an envious life with their winnings, they were frog-marched to jail when Camelot discovered they had used a stolen credit card to purchase the winning scratchcard!

In other ‘unlucky’ news, a winner received a lottery ticket as a tip in 1997 and went on to win £7.3million ($10million), which is roughly £11.94million ($16.4million) in today’s money, but decades later, she has yet to receive a penny! This story is one of anger, misery and attempted murder! Oh, and then there was one where an aunt bought her nephew scratchcards then demanded the winnings and another where a shop owner ran off with an instant win worth half a million euro’s!

Betfred refused to payout £1.7m in winnings to a customer who had landed a mega win, even though they had congratulated him on his winnings more than once! Andrew Green’s ordeal dates back to 2018 and it took him three-years to get his money! Taking Betfred to Royal Courts of Justice, Green was delighted when Mrs. Justice Foster ruled in his favour.

In March of this year, a young couple lost out on £182million after their direct debit had failed. The Hertfordshire pair in their teens said they were “absolutely heartbroken” when Camelot confirmed they did have all the numbers, but because there were no funds in their account, the purchase had failed!

All Eyes Down

Plenty of new bingo sites launched, including:

• Bingo Storm – the no wagering bingo zone
• Wild West Wins with its bonus spins welcome offer
• Prize Land Bingo, well, actually this one was a re-branding of Iceland Bingo but it’s still classed as new.

Multiple responsible gambling tools were introduced to help players stay on top of their spending. Tombola launched ‘MyPlay’ tool, offering a visual snapshot of where the most time and money was being spent. Play OJO introduced ‘Safe Mate’ with playing behaviour stats as well as a self-assessment and risk score test. Paddy Power went one further and announced that all registered players under the age of 25, would no longer be able to play once their loss limit had been reached!

Hundreds of new casino games were released, including:

• Dynamite Riches Megaways
• Playboy
• Rainbow Riches Power Mix
• The Walking Dead
• Bigger Bass Bonanza and its sequel Big Bass Bonanza Megaways

New live casino gameshows were launched, including:

• The Money Drop Live
• Sweet Bonanza Candy Land
• Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt

Stars in Their Eyes

Stars took to bingo in their droves with A League of the Own stars Jamie Redknapp, Andrew Flintoff and Tyson Fury trying their luck. Other stars attempting to clean up at bingo included Stacey Solomon and best pal Mrs Hinch and silver fox Martin Kemp.

In July, two long-lost sisters were reunited over a game of bingo! The pair of anonymous users had struck up a friendship in chat and after noticing they had far too many things in common, one of the siblings approached Mecca Bingo to ask for the other players details, but this was a big ask. Having had the permission off the other bingo player, Mecca decided to step in and help the pair make contact and the rest is history!

Some phenomenal prizes were won in 2021 and not just cash…

...but physical prizes. Mecca Bingo gave away a brand-spanking-new Mini convertible with £500 in cash and in April, they introduced their new bingo raffles. Top tech from Apple packages to luxury hot tubs and even holiday vouchers were being won. Tickets could be purchased online or entries into the draw could be made for free by spending in a postcard with your details on! These are still up and running! Rivals Buzz Bingo gave away home makeover packages and an £18K Nissan Juke too!