Goodbye Cozy, Hello GVC?

The Decline of Cozy

Cozy bingo sites used to be famous for their huge welcome bonus offers and no deposit bonuses (and infamous for their restrictive terms and conditions) and there used to be dozens of them to choose from with new ones launching all the time, but now there are hardly any, and the ones that remain are a shadow of their former selves. So what happened, and what can you do if you’re a fan of the Cozy bingo software?

The story begins back in Summer 2017 when tax changes meant that operators had to start paying tax on bonuses.  Prior to this, Cozy could hand out no deposit bonuses like candy as it would only cost them anything in the rare case where the player actually won something and managed to navigate the Byzantine terms and conditions to turn it into withdrawable cash.  With tax due on every bonus stake, this wasn’t sustainable and as it was such an important part of their business model, Cozy – and their white label operators – were in trouble.  Not long afterwards, the news broke that Cozy had been bought by GVC – a company so huge in relation to what they were buying that no formal announcement needed to be made and indeed, the first many of the skin owners (white label operators) heard of it was when we pointed out that the UK Gambling Commission licence for all Cozy skins had changed from Cozy Games Management Limited to Electraworks Limited.

It wasn’t long before it started to become apparent that in purchasing Cozy, GVC were only interested in the bingo software and not in the networks of white label bingo sites.  The last Cozy bingo site launched in December 2017, the three Cozy networks merged their bingo rooms in 2018 and the vast majority of Cozy bingo sites were closed during 2019 whether the operators liked it or not.  Just a few Cozy bingo sites are left now and they are in a pretty sorry state:

• Only 5 bingo rooms remain
• Most of the slot games have been removed, leaving only a few of the older Microgaming slots along with Cozy’s own distinctly underwhelming titles
• Although banners for newbie free bingo and a bingo bonus welcome offer are visible on some sites, when you click on them you find that content has been removed.
• The spins welcome offer that remains appears to be for slots they no longer have

Meanwhile, GVC had been busy developing and enhancing the Cozy bingo software and the Cozy casino platform for use on their own sites and the first big test of this came in Autumn 2018 when Foxy Games (or Foxy Casino as it was then known), swiftly followed by Foxy Bingo, moved to the new GVC platform.  Both had previously been Dragonfish sites and the move meant that GVC would no longer be reliant on – or have to pay – 888 for supplying the software.

The long term plan to move all GVC sites on to house owned software took another step forward when Coral Bingo took the plunge, leaving Virtue Fusion in January 2020.  By doing this, GVC became less reliant on Playtech; their sites still feature Playtech slots (and Virtue Fusion bingo in the case of Gala Bingo) but as a plug in product rather than a complete back end solution.

Ladbrokes Bingo is the latest GVC bingo site to make the move.  It had clearly been on the cards for some time as the old Virtue Fusion version of the site was looking more and more neglected, and the migration happened in May 2020.

So what’s the GVC bingo product like? Well, it’s pretty impressive!  The Cozy bingo platform was decent enough to start with but there’s been many improvements to prebuy and to mobile useability plus the addition of new bingo games  Friends™ Bingo, Cashout Bingo and Fab Grab which – along with a bigger choice of bingo rooms in general -are only available at GVC’s own sites and not at the Cozy skins.  And that’s not all!  The GVC sites knock the older Cozy sites out of the ring in some other very important ways as well.

• A much bigger and better selection of slot games
• Better welcome offers & player promotions
• Terms and conditions that are much kinder to players

If you are a fan of the old Cozy bingo product – and even if you aren’t – GVC bingo is well worth checking out.  We’re not expecting any new bingo sites to launch on the GVC software though, so there’s not many to choose from.

Where To Play GVC Bingo