Mecca Bingo

Early days 

Rank Group made a bet on the future with their decision in the early 2000s to invest in new technology of the decade and helped to push the direction of the betting and gaming industry to where it stands today.  

Ahead of the curve in creating brand new, native apps for the iPhone 3GS in 2008/2009, Rank Group approached mkodo to create a market leading native app for their Mecca Bingo brand. The MVP (minimum viable product) scope was to buy bingo tickets. But the Rank Group also wanted to capitalise on trends of the moment such as reality TV and game shows, by reskinning the apps to have a focus on such trends.  

The decision was made to code the initial apps in Objective C. This proved to be a great decision by the team since this is the code that we still use to this day.  

Further development 

In 2011, mkodo submitted the brand-new Mecca Bingo app to the App Store, the very-first real money gaming (RMG) app to launch on the App Store in the UK. But the work didn’t stop there, in 2012 there was a focus on new game features such as Last Chance Saloon, Scratch Card, Roll on Bingo, and Deal or No Deal - these all included real sound effects and animations which put an extraordinary load onto servers – saying that this was a successful year with the Rank Group and very feature focused.

Award-winning updates 

From the launch of the initial app in 2011, the Rank Group continued to adapt. Working with on how to make bingo games more interesting, mkodo built two native games that remain some of the Mecca Bingo apps most popular rooms to this day (Emoji Bingo & balloons), along with 75/80 ball bingo games. 

2016 and 2017 marked standout years for the Rank Group and their Mecca Bingo app. Taking home two awards at the 2016 EGR Innovation and Marketing Awards for ‘Best Native App’ and ‘Innovation in Bingo’ for the Emoji Bingo game that was built by the team at mkodo. In 2017, there was a focus on platform. In particular, a switch from OpenBet to Bede. Betting again on the future and on the relatively new coding language, Swift. Not only that, but Mecca also scooped another award at the EGR Awards for Best Mobile Bingo Product. 

The future of bingo 

Moving into 2018 and 2019, mkodo continued to work on improvements and developments for the Rank Groups Mecca Bingo app. 2018, in particular, was a very regulation heavy year and in 2019 we launched new native features such as, face ID, improving UX by providing Mecca Bingo app users with the ability to log in even faster.  

20s and beyond 

In 2020 and 2021 we developed several key features to enhance the UI /UX of the Mecca Bingo app further, including working with them on a brand refresh to celebrate their 60th birthday in 2021. With the brand refresh we produced a sleeker interface; making the app more intuitive for players to navigate, which ultimately means play time is optimised. These improvements have extended the functionality of the Mecca Bingo app and further elevated players engagement.  

Finally, as part of product development for the Mecca Bingo app, we also supported them with a smooth migration to their new Player Account Management (PAM) system from a previous supplier. The flexibility mkodo provided as part of this migration meant that the change could be made without a new app release, making it an entirely seamless transition. 

Our partnership with the Rank Group, particularly when it comes to their Mecca Bingo app, has been built on an understanding of the future. We’ve produced over 100 App Store release for the brand supported them on winning a number of industry awards and will continue to innovate with them. With that, we’re looking at moving to Swift UI in the future and, as always, responding to cycles of new apple features, as well as experimenting with various features and changes to ensure the Mecca Bingo app remains ahead of the curve and at the forefront of innovation.