Just fun and games?
The overriding posture of the gaming sites is: There's no harm done. These are free gaming sites, after all, and the only people giving anything away are the sites themselves.
But that is a dangerous assumption, experts on gambling addiction say. Such free lottery and gaming sites are just one step removed from hard-core gambling sites.
"The basic definition of gambling is risking something of value to gain something of value when the outcome is unknown,"says Kevin O'Neill, deputy director at the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey.
While playing the games on the sites is technically free of charge, every user must register, giving away valuable personal information that can be used to directly market products and services to them. Those ad pitches vary, but the top advertisers for both Bingo.com and Uproar are casino and gambling sites - many of which are based outside the U.S. to avoid the prohibition on online gambling - that are looking for users willing to shell out some cash for the privilege.
A major advertiser on Bingo.com is The Gaming Club, an offshore casino that would not be able to operate legally in the U.S. One of Uproar's biggest advertisers is Casino on Net, a site operated by Casava Enterprises on the Caribbean island of Antigua, a location notorious for offshore gambling.
Representatives from each of these U.S. companies express no qualms with their marketing affiliates. Lisa Gephart, an Uproar spokeswoman, says she sees no danger in marketing online casinos to Uproar's users. She says the question has "never been raised with us."
But O'Neill says the link between the free gaming sites and the pay gambling sites is precisely the issue. "Starting off with free sites, that's about getting a market, about getting people hooked," he says. "But there's no difference to me. Gambling is gambling. Everyone will choose their poison, their own recreation."
In particular, O'Neill says, bingo as an offline game has been a dangerous addiction for people who enter the bingo hall and spend more and more money playing, while spending less and less time interacting with those outside of it - especially their families. This lack of interaction is magnified when the only thing the gambler has to interact with now is a computer.
And don't think the online sites don't charge to play because they don't want to, O'Neill says. To get a license to charge for playing bingo is an arduous process that includes background checks, and the organisations applying for it must be not-for-profit ventures - which these online lottery and sweepstakes companies certainly are not.
There's also the issue of letting users gamble on credit. While most states don't allow bingo players to use their credit cards in brick-and-mortar bingo halls, the offshore Internet casinos do. O'Neill believes credit-card companies may begin cracking down on that use.
But the Net is a global audience, argues Beau Buck, executive producer at Bingo.com. He says that while its illegal to operate online gambling businesses in the U.S., people of other nations have no problem.
"I literally could not tell you, and I don't know how I would know, which of the global audience goes to the [offshore casino] sites which you're referring to," Buck says. "For the rest of the world, it's not illegal, and we [accept] the advertising."
While most of the sites demand users be at least 18 years of age, it seems no one is in doubt who the real target for these sites is: middle-aged women. Women aren't likely to be playing Quake online, says Sean Wargo, senior analyst at PC Data. "They're more likely to play poker or trivia games, and online gambling is very popular among the older female set," he says.
Shane Murphy, CEO of Bingo.com, says the segment of the population his site caters to isn't exactly a home run for advertisers. "It's a middle- to lower-class economic segment, and that's a challenge for the advertising community," he says.
But Murphy says that, while you won't see Lexus advertisements on his site, the demographic of the people who play at Bingo.com is underserved on the Internet, and he says they do purchase products.
The hope of gambling addiction activists such as O'Neill, however, is that the people playing Internet bingo will steer clear of the online casinos that provide much of the advertising revenue for Bingo.com and other gaming sites.
