Good article dated a couple weeks ago.
Start surfing, grannies bingo's hit the big time
By Jennifer M. O'Brien
Computer Dealer News, February 12, 1999
The image of the blue-haired grannies chain-smoking in crowded bingo halls
with their lucky trolls perched over game cards is being replaced by a new
scenario the 25-to45 age group logging onto the Internet for an online
kick at the bingo cat.
“The bingo demographic has dramatically changed,” says Darren Little,
president of Vancouver-based Bingo.com Inc., and himself an avid bingo
player. “It's now the baby boomers, or younger generations, that are
playing bingo. The baby boomers can afford to dish out the big bucks.”
The game has turned mainstream and struck a chord with younger people, he
says, partly because the huge gaming facilities -- which can pack as many
as 2,500 to 4,500 people are now offering entertainment before and midway
through the games. And the concept not only got them in the door, but may
have hooked them on the “age-old” game, he says, indicating there's
enormous opportunity for bingo gambling to heat up on the Internet like it
has at the mammoth gambling halls.
As such, Bingo.com is hoping to cash in on the bingo bonanza and the
increasing wave of popularity by offering “the world's first” free
bingo-based e-mail/Web page community, says Little.
“Bingo.com will provide Internet users with a destination point or portal
site that will be easily recognized as an informative home page,”: he says.
“The site will offer extensive free downloads, free information and free
hot links with a wide variety of exciting prizes and promotional
partnerships, creating a communicative infrastructure of international
chat, e-commerce, entertainment and excitement.”
It will combine the features o The Globe.com, Geocities.com and Microsoft's
Hotmail. “We'll be combining all of the best features of those three sites
and it will be surrounded by these large jackpot bingo games,” he says,
adding it will be the future home of the “million-dollar jackpots.”
Bridget Leach, an industry analyst with the Cambridge, Mass.-based Giga
Information Group, says Bingo.com could hit the jackpot because it offers a
vast amount of information as well as the bingo game a duality that makes
it unique in the marketplace.
“They may be successful because they have everything there plus the bingo.
They are incorporating all of the sorts of must haves (e-mail, build your
own Web page, news, information) that comprise the mainstream portals,”
Leach says. “And they're first to market in this particular domain. And
usually companies that are first to market are more successful because they
generate a larger user base.”
Its Canadian roots also make it unique, she suggests. “Most portal sites
are U.S.-based,” she says, indicating that the most popular ones are Yahoo,
AOL, MSN (Microsoft), Excite and Lycos.
Bingo.com signed an agreement with Vancouver-based Stratford Internet
Technologies and Vancouver-based Mindquake Software to develop the site,
which will cost an estimated US$1.3 million. Bingo.com is slated for
launch on April 30.
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