William Hill Bingo has moved in to television programme advertising with the announcement that they will be sponsoring ITV's brand-new daily game show Spin Star.

Spin Star is a brand new game show hosted by popular former Coronation Street star Bradley Walsh. The main stage will be dominated by an enormous Las Vegas-style slot machine which contains questions and cash prizes and the contestants can build up a prize pot of hundreds of thousands of pounds to win at the end of the show.

William Hill Bingo's sponsorship deal will start on Monday 10th November, when the Spin Star show is launched, and it is a 6 week deal comprising of various length bumpers at the start and end of the show and in and out of advertisement breaks.

"We're very pleased to have the opportunity to sponsor Spin Star. It's an incredibly lively and entertaining show with plenty of surprises and excitement, as we always offer on our website" said Hills' spokesperson Lili Huang. "The theme of our television bumpers shows the [Bingo] community feel on our newly rebranded website, and the show encapsulates the slots games that sit within William Hill's Bingo. This is an exciting new avenue for us, we are aiming to solidify our bingo image and increase national recognition, and sponsoring Spin Star is a perfect opportunity."

Following on from the success of their recent month long television advert campaign, the sponsorship of the daily Spin Star show is an excellent fit for William Hill Bingo.The Las Vegas style show will appeal to a similar demographic to William Hills popular online Bingo site at a key time of day and the excitement of the game reflects the William Hill Bingo Thrill catchline used in the programme bumpers.

During the game, contestants will experience the unpredictability and big cash gamble that only casinos can offer, and viewers will certainly feel the pain and joy as much as the contestants do.

The sponsorship is not the first mass marketing campaign that William Hill Bingo have been involved in. Following the national TV campaign in summer, William Hill have just finished another TV campaign which focused on their support of Breast Cancer Care through the Pink Ribbon games. This activity was enhanced by the re-design of the website which saw increased functionality, new games and more visible promotions.

Spin Star will be showed at 3:30pm to 4:30pm every afternoon on ITV1. At 4:30 after the show, a free bingo game will be held on William Hill's online Bingo website.

New study shows average annual growth outstripping that of land gambling
 
A new study of the global gambling market by consultant Marco Felice Baranzelli predicts that online gambling will present better average annual growth through to 2012 than its land counterpart.
 
Baranzelli says that the global gaming market’s gross gaming yield for 2007 reached $ 328.5 billion, up from US$ 309.6 billion in 2006. In year 2008, online gaming, including <a href="http://www.livethedreampoker.com">online poker</a>, <a href="http://www.livethedreamcasino.com">Online Casino</a> and <a href="http://www.livethedreambingo.com</a>Online Bingo</a> is estimated to represent just 4.8 percent of the total.
 
But whereas the offline market is expected to generate only a modest average growth rate of 2.2 percent until 2012, the online market will achieve a very respectable average growth rates of 10.3 percent per annum until 2012, achieving a total market volume of $ 24.4 billion, or 6.3 percent of the overall market (including offline and lotteries).
 
Baranzelli says that the online gambling market has grown rapidly over the last few years and is expected to continue to expand over the next five. Internet means that geographical boundaries do not apply and online gaming. The convenient accessibility and take up of broadband services throughout the world in recent years has been a major crucial element in the growth of online gaming, which is still a relatively small sector, but is growing rapidly.
 
Baranzelli quotes some statistics to back his assertions:
 
* Global online gaming revenue: + 13.5 percent p.a. (from 2007 to 2012)
 
* Online poker revenue: + 16 percent p.a. (from 2007 to 2012)
 
* Online casino revenue: + 15 percent p.a. (from 2007 to 2012)
 
* Online sports betting revenue: + 11 percent p.a. (from 2007 to 2012)

Online gaming in the UK has grown to become a huge industry. Millions take part in sports betting, online poker and online casino games as well as online bingo. The numbers of operators is in the hundreds and the market is becoming increasingly competitive.

So what's next for e gaming? Well the numbers of online gaming companies offering mobile gambling has increased rapidly in the last three years. Mobile technology has allowed customers to surf the internet at high speeds from any location with a phone signal.

Devices such as the Blackberry and I Phone allow users to download games from the net to play in their handset, be it on the train or walking to work.

Juniper Research have recently carried a report which estimates the annual wages bet on mobile phones in 2013 to be at around $27.5 billion. The Basingstoke based research group believe that the improvements in handset technology will see more consumers using their mobiles to surf the net instead of using a PC.

Author of the report, Windsor Holden, 'Operators are demonstrably much more open to the idea of mobile gambling than they were even twelve to 18 months ago both in terms of offering gambling services on-portal and accepting advertising from gambling companies,'

If remote gambling in America was to be made legal this would present a huge market opportunity for operators. It's predicted that the majority of bets will be on sporting events which is still the most popular form of online betting.

If you have any news, blogs or articles you would like to publish on this site register for free!

Great News for Online Poker, Online Casino and Online Bingo sites that operate from within the European Economic Area as Google have announced that from Oct 17th the search engine giant will  allow advertisements from any UK company registered with the Gambling Commission, as well as any company based within the European Economic Area (EEA) provided they are registered with their national regulator.
Google is to allow gambling advertising on its search website in England, Scotland and Wales, overturning a global ban introduced in 2004.

"Over the last few months we've been reviewing our gambling advertising policy in Great Britain to ensure it is as consistent as possible with local business practices," said James Cashmore, Google's industry leader for entertainment and media.

"Following [a major internal] review we've decided to amend our policy to allow text ads to appear against search queries related to gambling (including Online Poker, Online Bingo and Online Casino) in Great Britain."

Google said the adverts will be automatically classified as "non-family safe" so that they will not appear in searches if the user has applied the company's "safe search" filter. The adverts will only be available to British users, as Google will retain the ban in all other countries.

The move will allow a huge number of non-UK companies, such as Gibraltar-based 888.com and PartyGaming to increase their push into the British market.

This could mean great benefits for webmasters who have built up popular Online Poker blogs and other social media networks as the Google Adwords scheme will be available for the first time since the ban in 2004. However it could spell a tightening of budgets allocated to affiliate programs.

We want to know what you think?

Do you think it is a possitive move for the acceptance of the online gaming industry as legitimate business or will it mean you are bombarded with advertsing?