Cozy Games have been online since 2005 and now they are widely considered to be one of the biggest and best bingo networks in the industry. Their march to the top has been impressive to see and they’ve not always gone about things in the most conventional of ways.
The company also work as hard in the casino and games sector as they do in the bingo sector. They are another network that is able to link various different business streams into one to create a fantastic overall package.
This means that whilst the site may have ‘bingo’ above the door, the likelihood is that they are also going to be able to offer as good a casino experience as any in the industry as well.
Who are Cozy Games?
When companies like Cozy Games start to make waves, it draws the attention of the really big gaming companies within the industry. One of the quickest and easiest ways for huge conglomerates to expand is to acquire successful smaller brands that specialise in an area that no one else in their business group currently covers; and this is exactly what happened to Cozy Games in 2017 when GVC Holdings announced that they had added them to their ever-increasing online gaming portfolio.
The acquisition actually puts them under the watchful eye of ElectraWorks Limited, who are a subsidiary of GVC Holdings. It’s also worth noting that Cozy Games’ UK license is held through this company, just in case you were wanting to search it out on the UK Gambling Commission website and ended up confused.
For those that don’t know, GVC are quickly becoming one of the biggest gambling companies on the planet. They first started making noises when they acquired the failing Bwin brand and eventually turned them around to be a real force in the sports betting sector. Since then they have gone on to purchase Ladbrokes Coral for a staggering £4billion, and in the bingo sector own both Foxy Bingo and Think Bingo, to name just a few.
Whilst the news that GVC had brought Cozy Games on board was something that the company were rather oddly keen to keep under wraps, the fact remains that as GVC continue to expand, the Cozy Games brand will expand alongside them.
Cozy Games Networks
The company actually have 3 networks operating under them, and whilst they all work from within the same brand, they all offer slightly different things.
The first one to note is that of Best Bingo Network (BBN). They have a number of brands showcasing their software although none of them are particularly well known. WOW Bingo won the best Cozy Games bingo site at the 2017 Which Bingo Awards.
Lucky Duck and Live Bingo make up the other two networks.
Again, neither are particularly huge in terms of brand names, but both serve a purpose. Live Bingo in particular is expected to take off in the next few years, just like live casino did, so this is likely a network poised for the future, rather than right now.
White Label
One of the things that Cozy are best known for is their work within the white label sector. This is where they offer a full package to companies wanting to set up in the bingo sector, allowing them to use their software and network to do quickly set up and start trading.
Whilst the network is still one of the biggest, it’s worth pointing out that the company have had a fairly substantial cull in terms of the number of bingo rooms that they are powering. In fact, well over half of these sites have been closed down, redirected to other sites, or are now under a new network, and to be honest we aren’t sure why.
After getting little no response from Cozy regarding this matter, we can only assume that it’s to allow the company to streamline their approach and not dilute their brand too much, either with sites that weren’t willing to stay up to date or sites that weren’t living up to the Cozy Games name. Either way, the white label solutions that they offer are easily some of the best in the business.
The first thing that we want to note is the designs and layouts that are on offer. Unless you went through each site with a fine-tooth comb, we think that you would be hard pressed to spot a Cozy Games bingo room at first glance. We’ve tested dozens of the brands that are using their white label facility and they each look like individual sites rather than cookie cutter clones, which is a huge compliment to Cozy.
The one criticism that we have is that when you land on the bingo site it feels like more of a gaming site than one dedicated to bingo. By this we mean that all of Cozy Gaming’s games are included such as casino, table games, and slots. It’s not a huge criticism, but it’s one that people who aren’t interested in these types of things might look at and decide to go elsewhere.
Their white label can be as hands on or as hands on or off as the brand that is using it wants it to be, and the fact that you can get on board with Cozy for just £5,000 means it’s one of the cheapest and most accessible white labels that you can get for bingo. This is also likely one of the reasons why they used to have so many brands but decided to trim the fat.
Bingo Games
The range of games that are on offer are some of the best that we have tried. What’s really good to see is that these games keep changing too. It’s pretty common for Cozy to totally remove one game type and replace it with a newer, improved version of the same game, with improvements often based on both customer and network feedback.
The current stock of games includes:
- 90-ball
- 80-ball
- 75-ball
- 50-ball
- 35-ball
There are several variants of each kind, too. This is about as big a range of games as you will see anywhere in the industry.
We need to note just how good these games look as well. The design department have outdone themselves with so many awesome looking bingo games to choose from. Everything from how the balls are called, the theme for each game, and the community areas (chat box, etc) are all first rate and won’t be topped by many in the industry that is for sure.
It’s clear that they have also spent a fair bit of time fine tuning the user experience for their bingo games as well. The lobbies are easy to navigate and, while they don’t have as many rooms as we are used to seeing on other networks, they do allow you to see the number of players, price per ticket, prize pool as it stands, and then the jackpot where applicable for each game.
It’s all really simple to use, but if you are new and you aren’t sure what’s going on, then they have a ‘newbie’ section where they offer games that are either free or super-cheap to buy into, and this allows players to learn in confidence without having to play for too much money.
Speaking of money, games will start from as little as 2p per ticket and range up 50p for some of the bigger jackpot games.
Jackpots and Liquidity
The size of the network means that there is a large pool of players that access Cozy Gaming bingo games. Even at off peak times you can easily find games with hundreds of players, and at peak times some of the jackpot games will comfortably surpass the 1,000 mark.
A lot of this is due to the fact that you can pre-buy for almost all of the games, apart from free games and ones that cover the daily jackpots.
Again, their size means that the jackpots are considerably bigger than most. They can range from as little as £50 for some of the daily jackpots, with the progressives getting way up past the £10,000 mark, and have even hit 6 figures on occasions.
Jackpots tend to rise pretty quickly but a low jackpot ball number of just 33 means that they hit relatively often, which is another reason why so many players like playing them.
Promotions
Whilst not something that we like to talk about too much on these pages as they change so often and become out of date very quickly, we did want to point out that Cozy will allow brands to offer their own bonuses and promotions alongside that of the network ones.
This is fairly unique in the industry and not that many other white labels offer this option.
The reason we wanted to highlight this is because it means that there are some offers that are better than the network offers, so don’t just assume that since you are playing on the network you will get the same offers from each bingo site, as this is not always the case.