Gala Bingo

About Gala Bingo

Gala Bingo is a household name in the UK thanks to the extremely well known chain of bingo halls that bore the Gala name for more than 25 years. That came to an abrupt end when the bingo halls were sold in 2015 and rebranded in 2018 and these days, Gala Bingo is an online only brand owned by iGaming giant Entain. Sister sites Coral Bingo and Ladbrokes Bingo retain a bricks and mortar UK presence in the form of betting shops.

After years as a Virtue Fusion bingo site, Gala Bingo moved on to Entain’s excellent proprietary bingo platform in July 2021, joining the other two brands and Foxy Bingo. The very same week, Entain launched their own 75 and 90 ball versions of the classic Deal or No Deal Bingo game ensuring that Gala players could continue to enjoy this very popular bingo variant.

Gala Spins (a 100% slot game focused brand) used to be a separate site but it has now been integrated with Gala Bingo and is essentially just an alternate welcome offer giving you access to all of the same stuff (note that you can only claim one offer at Gala brands, so choose wisely). It occupies its own tab on the Gala site and you can switch seamlessly between Bingo and Spins without logging out.

Bingo Games at Gala

The bingo rooms at Gala Bingo include several types of bingo that are Entain recreations of Gala exclusives from the Virtue Fusion days:

• As previously mentioned, Deal Or No Deal Bingo
• Coronation Street Bingo, The Chase Bingo & Emmerdale Bingo (all 90 ball games with extra features)
• Bingo Beats (a 50 ball multi stake single ticket bingo game)

There’s also the newer Entain specials Slingo Bingo and Fishin’ Frenzy, 5 line bingo, regular 50 ball bingo, 80 ball bingo 30 ball (speed) bingo and several 90 ball rooms, one of which has a live stream every evening.  Most bingo rooms have lively hosted chat.

Those on a budget are catered for with plenty of cheap bingo; one of the Bingo Beats rooms has a 2p stake level and one of the 90 ball rooms has all tickets priced at 1p or 2p each.

There’s a fair amount of liquidity in the Entain network, enabling them to run big money games with prize pools in the thousands of pounds. But not all of the rooms have thousands of players – there’s plenty of quieter rooms and quieter times of day when you can have a better chance of winning than when it’s super busy.

Gala also run free to enter bingo tournaments (at the time of writing, each lasts an hour) You claim free bingo tickets to play in a special room where all the prizes are tournament points. Score highly enough in the tournament and you’ll win free tickets to be used in their regular bingo rooms.

Slots and Other Games At Gala

Gala – and other Entain sites – excel not just at bingo, but in the size and variety of the slot games selection; there’s a massive range of more than 1600 games on offer including many exclusives. For example, there’s various slot games themed on The Chase, Coronation St and Emmerdale and a whole series of Big Banker slots. And there’s a host of evergreen favourites such as Fishin’ Frenzy, Double Bubble, Fluffy, Rainbow Riches, Big Bad Wolf, Immortal Romance, The Goonies….the list goes on.

The progressive jackpots are particularly impressive; they include Jackpot King, Red Tiger hourly jackpots, Age of the Gods, Double Bubble, Power Play Jackpots, IGT MegaJackpots, Kingdoms Rise, Jackpot Giant, Gladiator, Sporting Legends, Eyecon Mega Jackpot, Jackpot Blitz, Rapid Fire and a sizeable Entain exclusive jackpot including Book of Myths and Loot’en Khamun.

As well as slot games, there’s more than 40 Slingo games in their own area in the lobby. Scratchcards also have a lobby area and it’s here that you’ll find other instant win games such as video bingo and Lucky Taps as well as the actual scratchcards.

Yet a third lobby area is for live casino game shows by Evolution, Playtech and Pragmatic Play, including several Entain exclusives plus bingo and lotto games such as Mega Ball and Vegas Ball Bonanza.

Apart from the absence of any bingo rooms and the inclusion of even more slot and casino games, the Gala Spins tab is almost identical to Gala Bingo. The main difference is that the tournaments in the Gala Spins part of the site are free slots tournaments rather than free bingo tournaments.

Also available is a search facility that’s super easy to use, to help you find games you might like that aren’t so prominent in the lobby.

Other Things To Consider

All of the Gala brands run free to play tournaments every day; as previously mentioned the Gala Bingo tournament is based on bingo and Gala Spins on slots and you can enter both of them if you like. There’s free bingo tickets and free spins on Entain exclusive slot games to be won.

Gala’s mobile service has won awards. As Entain are one of the very few operators allowed in the Play Store and App Store, there’s Android and iOS apps to make mobile play simple and secure. There’s the option to add biometric login (using your fingerprint) to avoid having to remember your password when out and about. The Gala bingo app is particularly easy to use and you can easily switch between bingo, slots and the chat.

Gala have long had a reputation for looking after their customers. They are constantly running player promotions and some of these have been in aid of charities. One thing that Gala have been really good at historically is thinking up promotions which offer prizes that money can’t buy – from tickets to the Gala VIP Christmas party to a guest appearance on Emmerdale for the winner’s pet. Although these days the promotions are mostly wheel spinner bonus games and the prizes are mostly cash, free spins and free bingo tickets, they still run some innovative promotions from time to time such as “All The Calls” where players had to identify all the bingo calls referenced in the Gala Bingo TV ad.

Gala is one of very few online gambling sites to have the High level of insolvency protection for customer funds (not that it is ever likely to be needed with the backing of such a huge organisation).

Entain are also very big on player safety and have won a number of awards for that, for example the Socially Responsible Operator of the Year at the SBC Awards 2022.

Final Thoughts

Entain made two bold moves in migrating Gala Bingo off the Virtue Fusion bingo platform and combining it with Gala Spins. Bingo players can be quite resistant to change and there was a risk that much of the player base would change to another Virtue Fusion site rather than stay with Gala.

But in fact, the Entain bingo product has turned out to be excellent and coupled with the huge range of slot and casino games Entain have to offer it makes Gala a top destination for bingo, slots and casino players and most especially for those who enjoy a bit of everything.