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Stadium Watch Blog
Tim Nelson

E-Bingo on hold, hopes to relaunch electronic gambling game this week

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Electronic linked bingo provider E-Tab said the company temporarily turned off the system the company considers the "killer app" for electronic gambling for repairs.

The bingo application was running at eight different sites and the game's manufacturer said it was getting a good response. It's the only electronic linked bingo game approved in Minnesota so far.

VIDEO: Piggies from Heaven electronic linked bingo game

http://youtu.be/53runLVoWmg

"People were excited about the game," said E-Tab's John Burger, at today's Gambling Control Board meeting in Roseville. "The time spent on the device was a lot more. The numbers were better than we thought they'd be, and also, it increased our pulltab numbers at the sites we were at. We had one site that actually increased 500 percent."

But it had some game-by-game glitches that Burger said some players found confusing.

"When we first designed the game, we anticipated it would be out in 500 sites or something like that, and we didn't take into account an easy way for players to redeem cards back to credits before the game began," said Burger. "We had a scenario, on two or three test sites, where someone might buy a card, and it might be 10 or 15 minutes that they're waiting for someone to join the game. It just wasn't a good customer experience, so rather than continue with the test, we thought it would be just a good idea to make those quick changes."

E-Tab and its distributors, 3 Diamond and M Peters, hope to have the upgraded games back to the Minnesota Gambling Control Board as soon as tomorrow, and back on their electronic devices later this week.