Sister Sites Guide
You don’t spend £402 million acquiring something unless you believe it’s genuinely different from everything else in the market. Flutter Entertainment’s decision to pay that amount for Tombola in January 2022 is one of the clearest statements of intent the UK bingo industry has ever seen. What Flutter was buying wasn’t a white-label shell. It wasn’t a platform business. It was Tombola’s games, Tombola’s community, and Tombola’s reputation for building the most original and most player-loyal bingo product in the UK from the ground up in Sunderland. Every game on the Tombola site was built in-house. The bingo rooms, the unique arcade titles, the chat rooms, the seasonal events, all of it is Tombola’s own.
The Tombola sister sites in a nutshell
Tombola has one formal sister site: Tombola Arcade, at tombolaarcade.co.uk. Both brands appear as active domains on Tombola (International) Plc’s UKGC licence 38613. Tombola Arcade is the proprietary arcade and slot game complement to the main bingo site: same operator, same account, different product emphasis. Flutter Entertainment owns Tombola and also owns Betfair, Paddy Power and Sky Bet, but those brands sit on entirely separate UKGC licences. They are not Tombola’s sister sites in any regulatory sense.
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At a glance
Brand reviewed
Tombola
Operator
Tombola (International) Plc (Flutter Entertainment)
UKGC account
38613
UK status
Licensed for Britain
Sister site
Tombola Arcade (tombolaarcade.co.uk)
Bingo welcome offer
100% match up to £50 on first deposit (min £10). No wagering on winnings.
Arcade welcome offer
200% match up to £50 on first deposit (min £10). No wagering on winnings.
Last checked
22 May 2026
Tombola Arcade: the one genuine sister site
Tombola (International) Plc’s UKGC licence has four active domains: tombola.co.uk, tombola.com, tombolaarcade.co.uk and tombolaarcade.com. That means Tombola Arcade is the one and only sister site on this account, and the relationship between the two is more integrated than the typical sister site pairing. Both run on the same proprietary platform built by Tombola’s own development team. Both carry Tombola’s distinctive community and chat culture. The difference is product focus: the main site is bingo-first with unique side games; Tombola Arcade is the dedicated home for Tombola’s proprietary arcade and slot content. Between them, they represent the full breadth of what Tombola has built in-house.
Tombola Arcade
My take: Tombola Arcade is the sister site that Tombola built to house its arcade and slot content separately from the bingo rooms. For years, Tombola was famous for not stocking any conventional third-party slots at all: the game library was made up entirely of proprietary titles you couldn’t find anywhere else. When the brand decided in to introduce slot games, they were still exclusively Tombola’s own, and the Arcade site was where the fuller range of those titles lived. Tombola Arcade carries 60-plus proprietary arcade games, including spin games, scratchcards, card games and bubble pop titles, with stakes from 5p and a maximum bet cap of £2 per play. The up-to-98% RTP ceiling on Arcade games is one of the more transparent commitments in the UK gaming market. The community feel, the moderated chat rooms, and the 100-plus Chat Moderators run across both the main site and Arcade seamlessly.
Best for: Tombola bingo players who want to explore the Arcade and slot side of the same family, or arcade game players who want to add bingo rooms without moving to a completely different platform. The accounts are linked: if you’re already at Tombola, you can access Arcade through the same login.
What feels similar: Everything structural. Same UKGC account (38613), same proprietary platform, same chat community and Chat Moderators, same payment methods, same responsible gambling tools applied identically across both sites. Same no-wagering philosophy on winnings. The Tombola DNA runs through Arcade as visibly as it does through the main bingo site.
What feels different: The product focus. Arcade is game-and-slot-first rather than bingo-first. The bingo rooms are not the centrepiece here. Players who arrived at Tombola primarily for the bingo community and the social chat-room experience will find Arcade a quieter, more solitary version of the same brand’s world. The welcome offer is more generous: 200% up to £50 rather than the main site’s 100% up to £50.
The angle: This is less a different brand and more a different front door into the same house. If you’ve been at Tombola for bingo and haven’t explored the Arcade, it’s the most natural next step inside the family. If you came looking for an entirely separate brand experience, you won’t quite find that here.
Flutter owns Tombola, but that doesn’t make Sky Bet a Tombola sister site
Flutter Entertainment also owns Betfair, Paddy Power, Sky Bet, Sky Vegas, Sky Casino, PokerStars and FanDuel. None of these are Tombola’s sister sites. The distinction is a legal one: sister sites share a UKGC licence account. Betfair and Paddy Power share PPB Entertainment Limited’s account 39426. Sky Betting and Gaming’s brands share Bonne Terre Limited’s account. PokerStars operates through yet another company. Tombola (International) Plc holds account 38613 with just two brands on it: Tombola and Tombola Arcade.
Flutter’s corporate ownership doesn’t change this picture. The UKGC licenses and regulates the individual operating entity, not the parent group. Self-exclusion, account management rules and bonus eligibility restrictions apply within the UKGC account, not across Flutter’s corporate family. A self-exclusion at Tombola applies to Tombola Arcade on the same account. It doesn’t automatically apply to Betfair or Sky Bet on their separate accounts. Players who want to understand the full Flutter picture, including the Betfair and Paddy Power sister site relationship, can find that on our Betfair sister sites page.
The reason this matters practically is that Tombola’s player protections, its mandatory staking limits and its responsible gambling culture are specific to the Tombola account and have been built into the platform’s DNA. Flutter bought Tombola partly because it valued that culture and wanted to learn from it. Treating Tombola as a gateway into the Flutter network rather than as a standalone brand with its own clear identity misses the point of what Tombola actually is.
The games nobody else has: why Tombola is genuinely unlike any other UK bingo site
Browse a standard UK bingo site, and the game library is almost entirely made up of third-party slot titles from providers like Pragmatic Play, NetEnt and Play’n GO, packaged into a room structure built on licensed white-label software. Tombola’s approach to this is completely different. Every game on Tombola, including the bingo rooms, the side games and the Arcade content, was designed and built by Tombola’s own in-house development team in Sunderland. You will not find Tombola’s Pulse, Stakeback, Morph, Paper or Cinco anywhere else. They simply don’t exist outside of Tombola’s own sites.
The bingo rooms themselves are an extension of this philosophy. As well as the standard 90-ball game, Tombola offers 80, 75, 60, 50, 40 and 30-ball variants, several of which it created rather than inherited from the industry. The 60-ball variant is Tombola’s own format. Single-ticket games like Potion, Paper and Blocks were specifically designed to work well on a mobile screen, which reflects a genuine understanding of how players actually behave rather than a desktop-first product adapted for small screens. Deal or No Deal Bingo is among the most-played rooms on the site, and Bingo Pulse creates a time-pressured format that adds energy to a product that could otherwise feel entirely passive.
With Tombola Arcade, the company introduced slot games for the first time. But characteristically, they weren’t buying in third-party content. The slots that arrived on Tombola and Tombola Arcade, Lost Kingdom Jackpot, Pharaoh Jackpot, Monopoly High Rise, Wolf Moon and Reel Outlaws Express, among them, are Tombola’s own proprietary titles. Players looking for the standard industry library of provider content won’t find it here. Players who value playing games that were specifically built for this platform and its audience will find something considerably more considered.
The Jackpot Champions games add a progressive jackpot layer across eligible Tombola titles, and Tombola Arcade’s progressive jackpot pool is built from the same in-house principles: stakes from 5p, maximum £2 per play, returns of up to 98% RTP. The RTP ceiling is publicly stated and is applied consistently. Most UK casino operators don’t publish their RTP settings at all. Tombola’s transparency on this point is another example of the brand’s customer-friendly focus.
Ownership, licensing and the 2025 regulatory issue
Tombola is operated by Tombola (International) Plc, registered at Floor 4, 55 Line Wall Road, Gibraltar, GX11 1AA, company number 105556. The UKGC account is 38613, and the brand is additionally regulated by the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner under RGL No. 052. Tombola (International) Plc is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Flutter Entertainment plc. Flutter paid £402 million in cash for 100% of Tombola in a transaction completed in January 2022. The brand has teams located in Sunderland, which remains its primary UK operational base, and Gibraltar.
Tombola was the first major UK online gambling operator to introduce mandatory staking limits and mandatory deposit limits for all players. That happened well before the UKGC required it, which tells you something about the direction the business was built to travel in. Flutter’s stated reason for the acquisition included the phrase “aligns with Flutter’s safer gambling strategy of expansion in our recreational customer base,” which is an unusual framing for a gambling acquisition and reflects what Tombola had genuinely built.
The company’s UK Gambling Commission regulatory actions section shows one entry, dated 21 July 2025. The Commission imposed a financial penalty of £184,500 following an investigation into a key event submission by Tombola. The investigation found that Tombola breached three Social Responsibility Code Provisions: SRCP 5.1.11 on direct electronic consent, and SRCP 3.5.3 paragraphs 2 and 6 on self-exclusion. In plain terms, there were failings in how marketing communications consent was captured and in how self-exclusion protocols operated for certain customers. The UKGC noted that the failings were isolated in nature and did not affect the entirety of Tombola’s controls. The company took immediate remedial action and cooperated fully throughout the investigation.
The penalty of £184,500 is relatively modest compared with some of the industry’s larger settlements, and the characterisation of the failings as isolated is meaningful. Tombola won the WhichBingo Responsible Gambling award in 2026, suggesting that the overall responsible gambling infrastructure is functioning well, even where the specific failure occurred. Nevertheless, players deserve to know about the findings and to have them in their proper context.
The chat rooms, the community and the thing money can’t replicate
Tombola’s chat rooms are among the most discussed features of the brand in player reviews, and not in the way that bingo chat rooms normally get discussed. The typical online bingo chat room is a box in the corner of the screen where automated messages appear, and a single moderator occasionally types something generic. Tombola’s approach is different in almost every respect.
There are over 100 Chat Moderators working across the Tombola and Tombola Arcade sites, all of them present in the rooms rather than monitoring from a distance. They run quizzes and word games throughout the day, answer trivia questions and hand out £1 or £2 in bonus credit to players who engage. They host themed events, including film nights and karaoke sessions, in the chat. They have individual personalities that players recognise over time. The community that has formed around this culture is one of the reasons Tombola commands the kind of player loyalty that most online bingo sites can only observe from a distance. Many Tombola players have been active for multiple years, and the referral bonuses (£20 for the referrer when a friend deposits and spends £20, £5 for the friend) are a reflection of how much of Tombola’s growth has come from word-of-mouth within that community.
Flutter’s CEO specifically noted the “highly recreational customer base” and the community strength as key parts of the Tombola acquisition rationale. Recreational players who come to Tombola for bingo and stay for the chat are fundamentally different from the bonus-chasing player profile that drives acquisition at most other UK gambling brands. The chat community is, from Flutter’s point of view, the product.
Welcome offers, free games and ongoing promotions
Tombola’s welcome structure differs between the bingo site and Tombola Arcade, and it’s worth understanding both even if you’re only registering at one.
tombola (bingo): 100% match up to £50. Make a minimum first deposit of £10 and receive a 100% match bonus up to £50. If you deposit £10 you get £10 in bonus funds; if you deposit £25 you get £25; the maximum bonus is £50 from a £50 deposit. The bonus funds can’t be withdrawn directly, but all winnings generated by playing with bonus funds go straight into your withdrawable cash balance with no wagering requirement attached. The offer auto-applies on first deposit, no promo code needed.
Tombola Arcade: 200% match up to £50. The same no-deposit-required structure applies, but the match rate is 200%: a £10 deposit gives you £20 in bonus funds, and a £25 deposit maxes out the offer with £50 bonus. Again, bonus funds themselves aren’t withdrawable, but all winnings from bonus stakes pay out as real cash with no further conditions. This is a considerably more generous bonus structure than most comparable UK casino and bingo offers, and the no-wagering-on-winnings principle makes it honest in a way that many welcome offers are not.
For players who don’t want to make a deposit to try the product, there’s a no-deposit option. New players can register at tombola.co.uk/freefiver and claim £5 in bonus funds without making a deposit, which is a genuine free-to-try option in a market where most “no deposit” offers are hedged with conditions that make them almost worthless.
For regular players, the free games programme is one of Tombola’s most valued ongoing features. Free bingo games run daily across both sites. Free to Play Friday is a weekly event. Tombola Arcade offers Super Spins as a free daily play. Students can access an 8% discount on purchases, a detail that reflects Tombola’s interest in specific audience relationships rather than generic promotional mechanics. The referral scheme gives £20 bonus to anyone who refers a friend who goes on to deposit and spend £20 in real money, with the referred friend receiving £5 on sign-up.
The promotions at Tombola rarely appear as the aggressive bonus-race marketing seen at many UK casino brands. They’re quieter, they suit the community culture, and they tend to reward players who are already engaged rather than trying to attract transient bonus hunters. That’s a deliberate commercial strategy as much as a values statement.
Deposits, withdrawals and keeping it simple
Tombola’s payment range is deliberately lean. Accepted methods are Visa Debit, Mastercard Debit and Maestro. PayPal is available for players who have maintained an active account for six months or more. There are no e-wallets beyond PayPal, no Apple Pay, no Google Pay, no open banking. Credit cards are not accepted, in line with UKGC requirements.
The simplicity of the payment range is consistent with Tombola’s general philosophy. The minimum stake is 5p. The maximum stake on Arcade games is £2. The deposit and withdrawal infrastructure isn’t trying to accommodate high-volume or high-value transactions, because Tombola isn’t built for high-volume or high-value players. The mandatory deposit and staking limits that Tombola pioneered in the industry reflect a deliberate decision to build for recreational players who want control over what they spend, and the payment architecture follows from that.
All transactions are processed to PCI-DSS standards. Withdrawals return to the same source as deposits, following the closed-loop policy that is now standard across UK-licensed operators. Processing times vary by method: e-wallet withdrawals are generally faster than card-based ones. There are no withdrawal fees on Tombola’s end.
The simplicity that some players find limiting is the same simplicity that others find reassuring. If you came to Tombola because you wanted a site that doesn’t try to make depositing and betting as frictionless as possible at every turn, the cashier’s modest range is part of the same ethos as the 5p minimum stake and the mandatory deposit limits.
Support and complaints
Tombola operates one of the more genuinely helpful support setups in the UK online gambling market. All three standard contact channels, phone, live chat and email, are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and all are handled by a UK-based team. The phone line aims to answer within 30 seconds, which is an unusually specific and unusually demanding target for an online gambling support operation. The live chat is accessible directly from the site and app. The email route handles more detailed account queries and formal complaints.
Phone number: 0800 29 888 73 (freephone)
Support email: support@tombola.co.uk
Customer satisfaction ratings for Tombola’s support are among the highest in the bingo and casino sector. The combination of a freephone number, 24/7 availability, a 30-second answer target and a UK-based team is the kind of support infrastructure that most UK operators have progressively reduced, apparently for cost reasons. Tombola has maintained it, which is consistent with the brand’s general approach to its player relationships.
Inside the bingo and arcade rooms, the 100-plus Chat Moderators provide an additional layer of in-session support that has no equivalent in the wider industry. Questions about game rules, bonus mechanics or account details can often be answered in the chat without ever leaving the room, which is a genuinely different kind of support culture from the help-centre-first approach that most operators now default to.
For unresolved complaints, Tombola (International) Plc’s UKGC account (38613) means the full UK-regulated complaints framework applies. The July 2025 regulatory finding, which related in part to self-exclusion protocol failings, makes it particularly relevant to know that the UKGC is actively monitoring this area of Tombola’s compliance. Tombola took immediate remedial action following the investigation, but any player who feels their self-exclusion or responsible gambling tools are not functioning as they should has a clear route to escalate beyond Tombola’s own process.
What I like, and what I don’t
What I like
- Every single game on the Tombola platform was built in-house. There is no other UK bingo or casino site that can make that claim with the same depth of library. The uniqueness is genuine and two decades in the making.
- The no-wagering-on-winnings approach across both welcome offers is one of the most player-friendly bonus structures in the UK market. What you win, you keep.
- Mandatory staking and deposit limits were pioneered by Tombola before the UKGC required them. That tells you the brand’s responsible gambling commitment predates regulation rather than being driven by it.
- A freephone 24/7 support line with a 30-second answer target, staffed by a UK-based team, is a level of support infrastructure that most UK operators have abandoned.
- The chat community is a genuine differentiator. 100-plus Chat Moderators, daily quizzes, bonus rewards for chat engagement and a multi-year player retention rate that reflects real loyalty rather than retained bonus funds.
- Tombola won the WhichBingo Responsible Gambling award in 2026 and has been consistently recognised for responsible gambling best practice across its operating history.
What I don’t
- The July 2025 UKGC penalty of £184,500 for self-exclusion and direct electronic consent failings weighs on this licence. Isolated and remedied, but it involved the most sensitive player-protection area the UKGC monitors.
- The payment range is very thin. No Apple Pay, no Google Pay, no open banking, no e-wallets except PayPal for established accounts. Players who want flexibility in how they move money aren’t going to find it here.
- If you came looking for a large, diverse sister site family, Tombola Arcade is the only destination. The Flutter corporate connection doesn’t change the regulatory picture.
- The proprietary-only game library is an enormous strength for players who value it and a genuine limitation for those who want access to the latest releases from Pragmatic Play, Evolution or other major providers. No third-party content means no live dealer, no branded slot titles and no industry-wide jackpot networks.
- Tombola’s design sensibility is resolutely its own, which is admirable but means the interface hasn’t chased the modern premium-casino aesthetic that some players expect. It looks like Tombola and nothing else, which is intentional but not universally popular.
My final verdict on Tombola and its sister site
Tombola has exactly one sister site on its UKGC account: Tombola Arcade. The two share the same proprietary platform, the same operator, the same community culture and the same responsible gambling infrastructure. Everything else Flutter owns sits on a different licence and is a different regulatory family. That’s not a criticism of Tombola’s position in the market; it’s simply the accurate picture.
The more interesting story is what Tombola actually is, and why it commanded £402 million in a cash acquisition from the world’s largest gambling company. It’s a brand built on games that nobody else has, a community that most UK gambling operators could only approximate, a responsible gambling record that precedes regulation, and a support culture that the industry has largely moved away from. The July 2025 regulatory penalty is part of the record and deserves its place in any honest account. So does the WhichBingo Responsible Gambling award that arrived the following year. Tombola is not a perfect operator, but it’s a genuinely distinct one. In a UK gambling market where distinctiveness is genuinely rare, that’s worth taking seriously.
FAQs about Tombola and its sister sites
What is the Tombola sister site?
Tombola Arcade (tombolaarcade.co.uk) is the only sister site on Tombola (International) Plc’s UKGC account 38613. Both Tombola and Tombola Arcade appear as active domains on the same account. All other brands that Flutter Entertainment owns, including Betfair, Paddy Power and Sky Bet, sit on separate UKGC accounts and are not Tombola’s sister sites.
Is Tombola part of Flutter Entertainment?
Yes. Flutter Entertainment acquired Tombola for £402 million in a transaction completed in January 2022. Tombola operates as a subsidiary of Flutter through Tombola (International) Plc, which holds UKGC account 38613. Tombola continues to operate with its own distinct brand, platform and regulatory standing rather than being merged into another Flutter brand.
Are Betfair and Sky Bet Tombola sister sites?
No. Flutter owns both Tombola and the companies that operate Betfair, Sky Bet and PokerStars in the UK, but those brands sit on separate UKGC accounts. Betfair and Paddy Power are licensed through PPB Entertainment Limited (account 39426). Sky Betting and Gaming brands are licensed through Bonne Terre Limited. Self-exclusion and account management rules apply within the individual UKGC account, not across Flutter’s corporate family as a whole.
What makes Tombola’s games unique?
All Tombola games, including bingo rooms, arcade titles, card games and slot games, are built in-house by Tombola’s own development team. Games including Pulse, Stakeback, Morph, Paper and Cinco don’t exist anywhere outside of Tombola’s own sites. In 2026, Tombola introduced its first slot games, but these were also proprietary titles such as Lost Kingdom Jackpot and Pharaoh Jackpot rather than third-party content from standard industry providers.
What is Tombola’s current welcome offer?
On the main Tombola bingo site, new players who make a minimum first deposit of £10 receive a 100% match bonus up to £50. Bonus funds cannot be withdrawn, but all winnings from bonus stakes are paid as withdrawable cash with no wagering requirement. On Tombola Arcade, the welcome offer is a 200% match up to £50 on the same terms. A £5 no-deposit bonus is also available for new players who register via Tombola’s freefiver referral programme.
What happened in Tombola’s July 2025 UKGC investigation?
On 21 July 2025, the UKGC imposed a financial penalty of £184,500 on Tombola (International) Plc following an investigation into a key event submission. The investigation found breaches of SRCP 5.1.11 on direct electronic consent and SRCP 3.5.3 paragraphs 2 and 6 on self-exclusion protocols. The UKGC noted the failings were isolated and did not affect the entirety of Tombola’s controls. Tombola took immediate remedial action and cooperated fully throughout the investigation.