The Sun is offering generous terms to encourage people to play its online bingo game.
In July, the paper offered would-be players £5 to set up a bingo account and, should they make an initial deposit of £10 they were promised a further £35 of credit.
In addition, the blurb promised people “a 50% bonus on your second deposit up to £50.”
A month later, The Sun amended the offer. People prepared to pay a £10 deposit would get £40 to play with.
Somewhat confusingly, the introductory movie says new players will get £30 extra, but the emailed offer says that a deposit of £10 will ensure £40 extra.
Whatever the case, the paper is clearly desperate to attract more gamblers. The Sun bingo site is a veritable casino.
Over at the Daily Mirror, there is also an offer to lure players. People are offered £20 “free” if they put down a £10 deposit.
And the Daily Mail is in on the act too. It is offering new players a welcome bonus of 20 free games (“no deposit required”)
It promises a “200% cash match” to people prepared to deposit up to £125 in advance… plus “an incredible deal on your second deposit… with half as much again up to £65.”
Evidently, according to a Mail article in March 2009, the former Labour government was at fault for nearly 200,000 people being hooked on online gambling.. The story began:
“The explosion in online betting sparked by Labour’s lax gambling laws is feared to have created nearly 15,000 new addicts in one year alone.
A survey by the Gambling Commission shows that 5.6% of over-16s had participated in ‘remote gambling’ in 2008, up from 5.2% in 2007.
Applied to the UK population as a whole, that would mean a total of nearly 2.7m online gamblers, a rise of 198,000 from the previous year.”
Bingo!
This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

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