{"id":6625,"date":"2022-06-09T12:09:34","date_gmt":"2022-06-09T12:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newbingosites.co\/?p=6625"},"modified":"2022-06-10T18:14:24","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T18:14:24","slug":"what-happened-to-dragonfish-bingo-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newbingosites.co\/what-happened-to-dragonfish-bingo-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened To Dragonfish Bingo Sites?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pretty much anyone who has played with more than one bingo site online will have come across a Dragonfish operated site<\/a>.\u00a0 It is the largest bingo network in the UK operating more sites than any other.\u00a0 You may also recognise 888 UK Limited, which are the company that owned the Dragonfish network and were the UK license holder for sites that operated on it.<\/p>\n In 2021 Broadway Gaming purchased the Dragonfish network<\/a> and platform from 888 along with bingo brands directly owned by 888 (such as 888 Ladies and 888 Bingo).\u00a0 Broadway then established a company called Grand Battery Holdings Limited to house the new platform and brands.<\/p>\n The sale came in to effect on 8th June 2022 at which point all bingo brands operated by 888 were transferred to Broadway and are now licensed under Grand Battery Holdings Limited. This is the company that will also hold the UK gambling license for all brands.<\/p>\n For the user not much will change, if you played on a site owned and \/ or operated by 888 it simply just has a new owner.\u00a0 The games, rooms and other aspects of the sites will run as before and sites will still be networked together.<\/p>\n You need to accept new terms to keep playing with them because the people who are responsible for the gambling license and therefore you and your money has changed.\u00a0 They still have to follow the same rules and protect you and your funds in the same way.<\/p>\n A lot!\u00a0 888 ran a hell of a lot of bingo sites on their platform.\u00a0 Some of the sites were both owned and run by 888 (such as 888 Ladies and Wink Bingo) and others are owned by someone else but operated by 888, known as white labels (e.g. Bucky Bingo and Robin Hood Bingo).<\/p>\n Whether it was 888 owned and run or a white label all sites are now run by the new company, Grand Battery Holdings Limited.\u00a0 Sites that are run by GBH but not owned can choose in the future to move to a different platform.<\/p>\n For example, in 2020 Bucky Bingo moved from Virtue Fusion (Playtech) to Dragonfish<\/a> and with the sale of the platform by 888 Bucky is now run by GBH.<\/p>\n Moving operator and network is a big step for many brands, though.\u00a0 Ultimately it means you need to re-sign up to a new site and all the games and rooms will change so I don’t foresee many brands moving away from the Dragonfish platform.<\/p>\n Dragonfish was a subsidiary software and games developer owned by 888 Holdings.\u00a0 It was basically the company that created all the bingo games and rooms and ran the actual network of sites, including all of the slots and games (via licensing arrangements with software providers).\u00a0 The sites that 888 owned themselves were held under a different subsidiary known as Cassava but they operated on the Dragonfish network.<\/p>\n There are two types of sites that ran on the Dragonfish network, those that were also owned by 888 (B2C) and those that were owned by others but were operated by 888 on the Dragonfish network (B2B).\u00a0 Those sites are known as white labels.<\/p>\n Most of the sites on the Dragonfish network are in fact white labels.\u00a0 At the time Dragonfish was sold 888 themselves owned 50 sites under their license with 169 white labels attached.<\/p>\n Broadway Gaming have bought the Dragonfish B2B and B2C bingo assets, their in house network as well as all exclusive assets, tech and operations relating to the bingo business, including all the staff.\u00a0 Broadway have acquired the 50 brands from 888 directly and the actual platform.\u00a0 While they don’t own the other 170-odd brands they will now run them on behalf of the owners.<\/p>\n Dragonfish is the biggest bingo network in the UK in terms of the number of sites that run on it.\u00a0 It is different to many other networks such as Playtech’s Virtue Fusion in that they don’t just operate bingo games and rooms they actually run the sites themselves and are responsible for customers.<\/p>\n All of the sites are aimed at bingo and slots only and with a simple design and system 888 were able to in effect clone their sites with new branding and themes to create 10’s of different bingo sites at a time.\u00a0 While 888 were running 50 bingo sites at the time of the sale to Broadway they also had over 100 sites that they owned but were no longer active.\u00a0 Demonstrating how easy it was to churn out new sites and themes as they went.<\/p>\n Using the white label model Dragonfish was able to expand to hundreds of sites.\u00a0 Here sites are owned by others but were operated by 888 on behalf of them.\u00a0 This meant 888 were responsible for the games, rooms, payments and the customer and the brand owner did all of the promos and marketing.\u00a0 Profits are then shared between the operator and the brand owner.<\/p>\n Dragonfish was so successful because it was so scalable.\u00a0 The simple structure made it one of the cheapest options for white labels, while at the same time other networks that operated white labels stopped operating.\u00a0 For example, Cozy Games<\/a> were sold to Entain a couple of years back<\/a> and they in effect got rid of the white labels and turned it into their own proprietary network.<\/p>\n Virtue Fusion<\/a> also stopped offering white label services and many of the brands that were operated by Playtech or Cozy ended up moving to 888 as the only logical alternative.\u00a0 Bucky Bingo, for example, as one of the better known Virtue Fusion sites ended up moving over to Dragonfish.<\/p>\n In effect 888 hoovered up a lot of brands as other white label networks were sold or changed strategy.\u00a0 This saw them increase market share and become the go-to operator for a white label bingo site.\u00a0 Why then would they sell it?<\/p>\n While 888 and the Dragonfish network had certainly gained a large market share and notoriety for 888 bingo is still a small fry business.\u00a0 Between their sports and casino divisions they make a hell of a lot more money compared to bingo and as the company as grown Dragonfish became less significant for them.<\/p>\n Additionally 888 have been expanding aggressively in the US in particular.\u00a0 They also took on the European arm and assets of William Hill in 2021 in a deal worth over $3 billion.\u00a0 Effectively on the back of this rapid growth 888 needed to offload Dragonfish to focus on their new ventures and the network takes a fair bit of effort to maintain but doesn’t provide the relative value for them.<\/p>\nHow Many Sites Does This Affect?<\/h2>\n
What Is Dragonfish?<\/h2>\n
How Did Dragonfish Become So Big?<\/h2>\n
Why Was DragonFish Sold?<\/h2>\n