Bingo.com Operations Limited of Ta’ Xbiex, a wholly owned subsidiary of West Indies-domiciled Bingo.com Ltd, is to launch an online gaming facility from Malta after being granted licences from the Lotteries and Gaming Authority, the parent company announced on Monday.

Calling itself the “world’s largest bingo hall”, Bingo.com says it has over 1.95 million registered members with over 800 new users signing up a day and is “one of the most recognised and most visited bingo entertainment destinations on the internet”.

The Bingo.com Group, based on the island of Anguilla, operates the www.bingo.com portal and offers multiplayer bingo, slot machines, and sweepstakes among other online games. It has been offering online bingo since 1999.

In an online corporate statement, company chief executive officer Tarrnie Williams said the Malta operation was “a significant step forward for our organisation. We are now free to begin marketing in the UK and are able to expand the reach of our affiliate programme to new and popular websites. We believe these initiatives in the UK, combined with our aggressive multi-language and multi-currency approach in other jurisdictions will ultimately prove successful for Bingo.com.”

After receiving a letter of intent from the Lotteries and Gaming Authority in late January, Mr Williams said that the booming UK market was “critical” to the company’s success.

Bingo.com Ltd is publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock market.

“Bingo.com has obtained a Maltese licence and is planning to transfer all its operations to Malta,” a Lotteries and Gaming Authority official confirmed yesterday. “However, transfer of all operations, including staff, is not a regulatory requirement.”

The Malta company has been granted Class 1 and Class 3 licences which allow it to operate online slot machines and pool bingo.

“This means that there is no fixed prize money but it depends on the pool money set up by players. In such a case, the operator does not bear a risk of losing since the prize money is set up by the pool players but gets its income from a commission,” the official pointed out.

The Lotteries and Gaming Authority has granted licences to 320 online gaming companies.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.