Bede Goes Mobile
At Bede Gaming we have focussed a great deal of energy on preparing for the emerging mobile bingo market. Unlike most mobile bingo products it is exactly the same product on your phone or tablet as you can play online. It is built on a multi-tiered HTML5 gaming framework that allows complete customisation of the bingo client so an operator can easily change the look and feel of the product.
The customer demographic for online bingo in the UK, the leading online bingo market, is distinct from that of other product types. The proliferation of suitable mobile and tablet devices amongst this demographic is only just underway and looks set to transform the online bingo market. It seems entirely logical that online bingo customers will veer in the direction of tablet devices as they become more affordable.
Experience would suggest that online bingo customers rarely play bingo in isolation or exclusively. Instead they consume other media such as TV whilst they play bingo. It is much easier to do this with a tablet device than from a desktop or laptop. I would anticipate that mobile and tablet will be close to the dominant delivery mechanism for online bingo within two years.
It is important to accept that delivering a seamless mobile bingo experience is a challenging undertaking. Rather than replicate the traditional experience we have sought to share that experience on mobile and tablet devices. At heart the fundamentals of bingo are pretty simple and we keep them simple on mobile.
I think customers will be attracted by the reality of having a single account across all devices thus extending their traditional online bingo experience into new environments. Our bingo proposition draws from our team’s experience of working with all of the most prominent bingo suppliers over the past 10 years.
Front end innovation has been surprisingly slow over the past five years as providers have consolidated their offerings whilst focussing on compliance issues as they prepared for entry into regulated markets. As a result the online bingo customer experience has not significantly improved. By implementing social layers, new product features and delivering the core product in a fully customised manner Bede Gaming will be moving the provision of online bingo into a new era.
Product prioritisation for mobile has understandably been determined by customer demand and the anticipated market opportunity. Mobile Sports Betting has lead the way as the sports betting customer demographic has been ripe to receive this service. I am surprised that there are so few quality casino games being delivered on mobile. Ageing, inflexible, un-scalable platforms have made it difficult for the big platforms to integrate good third party mobile content. Without distribution some of the best third party casino content is not yet being taken to market.
At Bede we do not talk of delivering mobile bingo but of delivering bingo to all devices and ensuring our platform is designed to be device agnostic. The default position should be that the customer can access our bingo service irrespective of how they choose to receive it.
Michael Brady, CEO