The fact that Gala Bingo retained their Gala Live room as its new version of Gala TV when it had its makeover took me a little by surprise, although I haven’t thought much more about it until recently, when Antony Costa from Blue became the latest celebrity to jump in front of the camera to entertain players at the site and answer questions.
The idea of live presenters, callers or chat hosts has never been one that I have been particularly fond of and it does not seem to have taken off in the way that might have been anticipated.
Given that online bingo players are by and large a very social bunch, I would have thought that many more would jump a the chance to play with real live people they could see on their screens. However, judging by the numbers in the live rooms at bingo sites that have them this would not seem to be the case.
Bingo Cams is a site that tries very hard to make live interaction attractive and succeeds in many ways. It’s chat hosts are some of the hardest working around, having to type and talk and dress up all at the same time. They also have celebs in from time to time to take the reins.
Sites like Crown Bingo on Virtue Fusion and Chit Chat Bingo on GTech still have their live presenter rooms, which offer extra fun games that pay out extra cash, but these are not usually very busy even during their limited opening hours, which means that the prize pots are not very high, so you get a bit of a vicious circle developing.
I’m not sure what it is about these rooms that mean players don’t use them so much, especially as more and more people move up the VIP ladders. I would have thought that VIP’s would be keen to use all the local rooms their favourite site had.
There is clearly much more to be done with these live rooms and the fact that sites such as Bingo Hour and Wink Bingo did not develop the live presenter aspect of their offer further came as a surprise. It may well be that in time they will have another go, but for now it’s a case of wait and see what comes next in the remaining live rooms.
