Tombola (bingo company)
Tombola Ltd (stylised as tombola) is a British online bingo company. The headquarters are in Sunderland in the North East of England, with additional offices in Gibraltar, Milan and Madrid. Founded in 1999, its main site, tombola.co.uk has become the largest bingo website in the UK, with more players than any other company, as well as being number one in Spain and Italy. tombola produce original bingo software and games, created by an in-house development team, and is one of the largest employers of game and web developers in the North East of England. History. Tombola  was established in 1999 by Phil Cronin. He had previously worked for his family's business Edward Thompson printers, until 1995. Under the Edward Thompson company name, the Cronin family have provided printed paper bingo tickets to bingo halls since the 1960s. tombola 'soft launched' in December 2005 using the Sun Newspaper as a brand, but retaining control of the business branded as tombola. The main launch went ahead in January 2006 as SunBingo. The Sun newspaper provided marketing and branding while tombola provided the website site, the games, staff and all technical infrastructure. This continued until August 2008 when  tombola became independent from the Sun, continuing on as tombola, with all the staff being retained at that time. Sunbingo continued with the Sun using JackpotJoy software as all tombola games had been produced in-house by tombola technicians and continue to do so to this day. The Sun hired their own chat moderating staff as all chat moderation staff working until that time remained with tombola. Since founding tombola, Phil Cronin has been awarded Durham & Wearside Business Executive of the Year 2011. He has also expanded the tombola business into Europe with tombola receiving gaming licences for Spain and  Italy in 2011. In November 2011 tombola was launched in Italy, and in June 2012 also launched in Spain. Portugal was added in February 2018 and Denmark in January 2019. Tombola also added Sweden in March 2019 and The Netherlands in October 2021. In January 2022, Flutter Entertainment completed the acquisition of tombola and Phil Cronin steps down as CEO and sole owner. Awards. tombola has won twenty-seven awards since re-launching in 2008: Sponsorship. tombola has undertaken a number of sponsorship deals. In November 2009, the company began sponsoring ITV soap opera "Emmerdale" in a deal that ran  until March 2012. In April 2010, tombola agreed a deal to sponsor Sunderland AFC for the 2010/11 and 2011/12 English Premier League seasons. In September 2014 tombola began sponsoring the ITV daytime television show, "Loose Women". In November 2017, tombola arcade began sponsoring "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!". The sponsorship was consequently renewed for the 2018 edition of the show and has been renewed each year since then and is ongoing. Charity and Community Work. In 2012 tombola became the main sponsors of Sunderland AFC Keroche, an African football club supported by Sunderland AFC fans in  England. tombola paid for fifteen boxes of football kits to be shipped to Africa for the team. Tombola also encourage charitable work from its staff and not only can all staff take a 1 day sabbatical to devote time to a charity, but every £1 raised by any member of staff at whatever level, is matched by tombola. In addition they support several food programmes in the city of Sunderland and extensively support a food bank in Hendon in the city. In July 2014, tombola launched the tombola Academy, a scheme that recruits the most talented young graduates and  apprentices from the surrounding area into full-time training at their headquarters in Sunderland.