Tombola Bingo

Tombola's own pages describe it as Britain's biggest bingo site. I was sceptical the first time I wrote about it, because every operator claims to be the biggest something. Then the traffic figures turned up and settled the argument: it draws more players than its nearest rivals combined, which is not a boast so much as a measurement.

The company behind it is tombola (International) Plc, company number 105556, registered at 55 Line Wall Road in Gibraltar and licensed in Great Britain by the Gambling Commission under account 38613, with a Gibraltar licence alongside it. The operation itself is in Sunderland, which the site cheerfully calls tombola Towers, and most of its chat hosts are in the north east too. That matters more than a head office address usually does, because the games are made there as well.

Welcome Offer

The offer is advertised as a free £20 bonus, and the site states it like this:

Significant Terms: Deposit £20 and play with £40 and 20 free spins. 100% bonus match up to £50. Minimum £10 deposit. 1 Free Play awarded for every £1 (up to 50 Free Plays). First deposit only. T&Cs apply.

So it is a 100% match capped at £50, and £10 is enough to trigger it. Put in £10 and you play with £20. Put in £50 and you play with £100, which is as far as it goes however much more you deposit.

There is a wrinkle worth pointing out, because the headline and the small print do not quite agree. The banner promises 20 free spins. The terms underneath describe something different: one Free Play for every £1 deposited, up to 50 Free Plays. Those are not the same thing, and the site does not reconcile them anywhere I could find. Check which you are actually being given at the point you sign up.

What the terms do not carry is a wagering multiplier. Bonus money cannot be withdrawn, but there is no published playthrough figure attached to winnings, which is a better deal than most bingo welcome offers manage even now the 10x cap applies to everyone.

Promotions

The ongoing side is where a bingo site either keeps you or loses you, and this one is busy: monthly promotions, guaranteed jackpot games, free bingo rooms, prize giveaways and reload offers.

There is also a refer-a-friend scheme, which pays £20 in bonus money once the friend deposits and spends £20 of real money. The same rule applies as on the welcome offer: winnings can be withdrawn, bonus money cannot, and the credit does not work on Tombola Roulette.

Bingo Games and Rooms

Every game here is built in house in Sunderland, and most of them exist nowhere else. In an industry where a dozen sites share one supplier's bingo network and differ only by logo, that is the single most interesting thing about the brand.

The spread covers 90-ball, 80-ball and 75-ball bingo along with speed and mini variants, and tickets start at 1p. Deal or No Deal Bingo runs under licence from the format's owner, with progressive jackpots from £500, and its Banker's Bonus game takes 5p to £2 a go with wins up to £10,000. Pulse plays from 10p to £2 with jackpots up to £20,000. Slingo Splash and Tombola Roulette fill in around them.

What you will not find is a slots lobby or a live casino, and the site is not pretending otherwise. If you want those from the same stable they live on the sister site, tombola arcade. If you want bingo, this is the deepest and most distinctive set of rooms in the British market.

Depositing and Withdrawing

The cashier has more rules than most, and nearly all of them are in your favour. The minimum deposit is £10 and the most you can put in across a week is £500. You can only deposit at all if your balance is under £2, which stops the top-up-while-losing habit that most sites are happy to let run.

You can register up to four payment methods but only keep one active, and every withdrawal goes back to the method you last deposited with. Debit cards, Apple Pay, bank transfer and PayPal all work for cashing out. PayPal comes with a restriction worth knowing before you rely on it: it is only available to players who have used it in the past 6 months, so if you have never used it here, or moved off it to a card, you cannot switch back to it.

The minimum withdrawal is £10. The exception is closing your account, where the minimum drops to £2 and that £2 is kept to cover the administrative cost of processing it. It is a small amount of money and an odd note to end a relationship on.

If an account goes dormant, any bonus funds are removed, and an account with no balance is closed. The site publishes no processing times for withdrawals, though it does claim to have made them quicker over the years.

Customer Support

Live chat and a freephone number, with the site stating cover around the clock, and the chat hosts are real people in the north east rather than a queue in another time zone. Having a phone number at all puts it ahead of most of the market, where support means a form and a wait.

Review Summary

I used to dislike this site intensely. In the first version of this review I called it about as fresh, interesting and exciting as the avocado bathroom suite in your great aunt's house, and I meant it: the design was dated, the images were pixelated, and it did not look like the market leader it kept claiming to be.

When I wrote that, I noted the brand had just been bought and might get the investment it needed. It did, and I was right to expect it. The colour scheme and the feel survived, which was sensible given how many members know it by muscle memory, but the polish arrived. It was like the first time I wore glasses after insisting for 5 years that I did not need them: same world, suddenly in focus.

What earns the fourth star is the combination you cannot get elsewhere: games made in house, tickets from 1p, real jackpots, staffed chat, a phone line, and a cashier that actively makes it harder to chase losses. What keeps it off the fifth is smaller but real. The welcome offer's headline and its own small print describe two different rewards, and closing your account costs you £2. Fix the first and I would happily revisit the second.