The National Lottery have been forced to remove an advert that was deemed to be anti-bingo, but is bingo now becoming more like a lottery? Over the last few months we've noticed more and more "pre-buy" games on offer to bingo players. These are usually high price ticket games offering wonderful prizes. Foxy Bingo for example ran pre-buy games for their 3rd birthday promotions. A car and holiday were amongst the prizes. Wink Bingo have recently launched their Pressies Room - you can buy tickets in advance for the chance to win a year of Tesco Shopping.
Indeed even our own Prize Bingo have pre-buy games. There's a pair of VIP Kylie tickets at the O2 Centre up for grabs on July 17th. The idea of pre-buy is so that you don't miss the important games, and that you've got your ticket for the game even if you're unable to login and play.
Pre-buy bingo isn't new - most bingo sites allow purchases of cards in advance so that you can play bingo even if you're not online. Jackptjoy for example allow this! ITV's Bingo Night Live is such that you don't need to play along - it's all done automatically for you once you've "pre-bought" your free tickets!
But is pre-buy good for bingo? We all know that bingo is a great game because of it's social capacity, but pre-buy has the potential to erode the bingo community. More and more people can now play online bingo without actually playing at the time the game is running.
There could be a time when no one is online playing bingo but they're in the draw to win prizes as their cards have been pre-bought. At that point surely bingo simply becomes nothing more than a lottery?
