While other British industries are anticipating lean if not bleak times in the near future the same certainly can’t be said for online bingo.

An industry specialist says there’s tremendous scope for growth in the online bingo sector in the next one to three years specifically.

“Online bingo site launches are expected in Spain in the next three months and also in Denmark, Sweden and Ireland shortly. All are underdeveloped markets that have a history and culture of bingo halls so you would expect them to follow the U.K market in terms of growth” says Al Haig-Thomas, chief executive of Virtue Fusion, a leading online bingo software provider.

British online bingo sites are keeping their fingers crossed that the success they have experienced here can transfer to neighbouring European nations.

According to Phil Fraser of bingo information site ‘Which Bingo’ the U.K. is the world’s most developed online bingo market. In 2004 punters had just 17 websites to choose from in the U.K. - now that figure is a massive 243, that’s an approximate 1400% increase in the amount of sites available in just four years.

So in financial terms how has the market growth and increased competition in recent years effected revenue. Well last year alone £650 million was spent on online bingo in the UK, companies pocketing a substantial £120 million in profits.

With over half a million online players having a flutter each month the game is big business but it differs from other conventional forms of gambling.

Research carried out by Cashcade Ltd who own the award winning Foxybingo.com site shows that players tend to be female, aged between 25 and 50 and educated to high school level.

This represents a very different demographic group to your regular bookie population on a Saturday morning.

While targeting this group is intrinsic in helping to help grow the industry there is another major reason why more and more Britons are flocking to play online bingo.

The spread of broadband internet access clearly helps all forms of online gaming but online bingo seems to benefit more than others.

Going forward Industry leaders in the UK believe further growth is inevitable.

Warwick Bartlett who is chairman of the British based ‘Global Betting and Gaming consultants’ says he believes the future is bright.

Speaking recently he said “We estimate that by 2012 online bingo will account for 25 percent of the worldwide betting market and deliver profits in excess of $2 billion. As broadband penetration increases, people become more conscious about the cost of driving to real-world bingo halls. When they find that they can't smoke when they get there, playing online bingo from home becomes more and more attractive. From a customer point of view it is a great gambling proposition at a very low cost.”
But surely any kind of credit crunch in the UK must inevitably have some sort of negative impact on all gambling sectors. Recent figures indicate that the online bingo market is growing at 3% month on month at the moment compared to 10% over the same short time frames in 2007.

Despite this Phil Fraser from Which Bingo remains confident that online bingo can weather the current storm with ease. He said “there is some sign that the economy is having an effect on online bingo. But I would prefer to say that while it may not be recession-proof, those sort of growth numbers suggest it seems to be recession- resistant.'”