16th Century – Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia

Traditional bingo literature traced the origins of the game as far back as 1530. The first lottery in the world, known as Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia, loosely translating to ‘The game of lotto in Italy,’ is the earliest form of bingo and was traditionally enjoyed every Sunday. It was the game’s core elements that were preferred by the masses across Europe where it later spawned into a variety of variations across Germany and France.

Structurally, the first lottery game in Italy operated in much the same way as modern lottery. Players had to select a set of numbers where another set of numbers were drawn from a drum. The player who had the most hits or numbers would be the winner. From this, the seeds of bingo quickly spread across France during the 17th century where it was renamed and reformed into Le Lotto.

18th Century – Le Lotto

In 1778, a game was developed for the Aristocracy called Le Lotto. The game took aspects of the popular lottery game developed in Italy and infused it with game cards. The format of the game card consisted of nine vertical rows, three horizontal rows, and five unique numbers.

During a game of Le Lotto, wooden chips would be drawn from a drum and the first player to completely cover a horizontal line was declared the winner.

During the 18th century, Le Lotto was already starting to resemble the bingo game played and enjoyed across the globe today. The game of Le Lotto also formed another incarnation that started to take shape during the 19th century in Germany.

19th Century – Education in Germany

German academics initially started working on the game of bingo as an educational tool during the 1880’s when they noticed the immense popularity of the game among the French intelligentsia. They developed a tombola-styled structure and was primarily utilised to assist children in improving their spelling and math skills. Much like Le Lotto, this tombola-style game offered players a game card that contained a selection of letters or numbers printed on the card. Utilising a tombola drum, tiles were drawn by the master of ceremonies and the first player to spell out a certain word or cover a set amount of numbers would be declared the winner. As Germany’s tombola and the French Le Lotto games started to proliferate and grow in popularity across Europe, the next milestone in the evolution of bingo came into existence courtesy of Hugh J. Ward during the 20th century.

20th Century – The Carnival Revolution in the US

During the 1920’s, Hugh J. Ward was travelling through Europe and stumbled upon the game of bingo. He wrote down the main structure of the game and began developing his very own version for carnivals across the United States. He initially called the game ‘beano‘, as dried beans were used to mark the numbers.

The game operated in much the same way as Le Lotto where the first player completely covering their game card shouted beano and was declared the winner. The game quickly spread across the United States, and the word beano was bastardised with records indicating that the word bingo was formulated through a simple slip of the tongue in the 1920’s.

It was during the same period where the game was mass produced by a toy salesman known as Edwin S. Lowe. He spotted the game at the 1929 carnival and worked with Carl Leffler, who was a math professor at Columbia University, to create 6,000 different card combinations, all featuring an equal opportunity to win a single game. After this, Edwin S. Lowe copyrighted the word ‘bingo’ during 1930 giving birth to modern bingo. In 1933, he introduced the official rule book for bingo that helped standardise the game of bingo around the world.

Bingo – Post World War II

Bingo became a massive hit in the United States, and by the mid-1930’s it was estimated that over 10,000 games were played every single week. This participation level raised millions of dollars, encouraging charities and churches to utilise bingo as a way of raising funds. By 1940, the game of bingo was considered a revenue generator instead of an educational tool, as well as a source of entertainment. In 1945, with the end of World War II, it was utilised by local councils to boost morale and to repair Britain.

1960-2000 – The Rise and Fall of Bingo

During the 1960’s and onwards, live bingo was at its peak in the United Kingdom. Rates of participation across a network with well over 1,000 bingo halls managed to top a million players per month and revenue ascended. Apart from thriving success in terms of participation in the UK, the bingo industry also managed to become a major employer during the 1970’s and through the 1980’s.

When British bingo was at its peak, more than 20,000 employees were employed in the United Kingdom.

Unfortunately, rates of participation gradually decreased, and the UK Bingo Association claimed that the number of bingo halls active across the country dropped to lower than 400. Furthermore, the number of employees in the bingo industry also decreased to less than 12,000. However, the reduction in land-based bingo activity, fortunately, coincided with the rise of bingo online.

Cost

Spending a night in a land-based bingo hall will cost you an average of £20, including drinks, food, and game tickets. However, online bingo operators have much lower staffing cost and space, and with the reduced overheads they can provide games at a far lower price as well. Although there are bingo games that can cost just as much as land-based bingo games, normally around £5, the average price for a game ticket online is around £1. The lower price in tickets are partly due to games only costing £0.05. Furthermore, online Bingo also gives you the option to play for free where new players can enjoy a selection of free bingo games.

Prizes

Each bingo hall offers its own bingo games along with a range of jackpots. The jackpots are determined by the amount buy-ins collected from players, greatly fluctuating the prizes in every land-based bingo hall and bingo being played online. The largest bingo game in the United Kingdom is the national bingo game that occurs every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This bingo game links players from across the country via a telephone system. This set-up results in prizes being much larger due to an increase in participation. As per the rules of the national bingo game, the top prize cannot exceed more than £25,000. However, the jackpot prize can reach a staggering £250,000.

The jackpot prizes in an online bingo environment can be much higher. Although there is a massive network of guaranteed prizes, the biggest attraction for most players is the progressive jackpot games. Online bingo operators utilise a system much like online progressive slots where a progressive jackpot game accumulates a small percentage of every player’s buy-in and contributes it to the communal jackpot. For instance, if a game ticket will cost £1 where the online operator will take a total of 10% that will be added to the progressive jackpot. Thousands of bingo players along with their buy-ins are added to the jackpot every hour under this system and the result is a jackpot that exponentially grows, reaching hundreds of thousands and, often, millions of pounds.

Bankroll Management

One of the most crucial skills required as a bingo player is to master the art of bankroll management. This means, as a player, you will need to establish a set of rules that will govern the amount you spend on bingo activities. More specifically, a player shouldn’t risk more than 3% of his/her bankroll on a single bingo session. For instance, if a player’s bankroll is worth £1,000, they should not wager more than £30 on a single session.

Game Selection

Deciding on the correct game to suit your unique playing style is also very important. Browsing through the game varieties in the online bingo industry, you will quickly notice that there are all shapes and sizes available to choose from. The choice can sometimes be overwhelming for a newcomer and therefore a fantastic way to decide the correct game is to locate one with an entry fee of around 10% of a daily bankroll. Taking the bankroll management example into consideration, a player should look for bingo games that cost around £3.

Focus

Even though online bingo sites automatically mark off numbers on a player’s game ticket, it is still beneficial to focus when deciding to play bingo and this does not necessarily mean when the game gets underway. The focus lies with choosing the correct game, checking numbers, selecting numbers, and counting prize money, all of which requires a certain degree of attention and focus.