101 Players Split Jackpot After Bingo Blunder with the No: 49

Chaotic and Frantic Scenes with Bingo Winners

One jackpot winner is lucky but scores of bingo jackpot winners has never been heard of. Until now. On Saturday, 101 people were playing bingo at an outdoor event organised by local businessman Maurício Façanha in Ceará, Brazil, when every single person who attended called on the number 49 to win a jackpot.

The square erupted into a frenzy with all winners waving their tickets and eyeing the prize. Witnesses described the scenes as chaotic with frantic players all scrambling to claim the cash. Façanha has been running bingo games for the community for two years and had never seen anything like it. After inspecting each ticket that came to the winners table, the error was spotted…

…the number 49 had been printed on every single ticket, a mistake that the business owner takes full responsibility for. “I was stunned trying to understand, but when I stopped to analyse it, I saw all of the cards had the (number) 49,” Façanha said. “It was a graphical error that shouldn’t have happened. For me it was surprising. Everyone was euphoric for having won. They started screaming.”

Oops, I Did It Again

Only there were more errors to come as the evening commenced. In two further bingo games, the misprint produced a further 75 and 42 winners, only unlike Tombola, jackpots in Brazil have to be shared! Britain’s biggest bingo site is one of only a handful of sites to guarantee its jackpots, so, if more than one player scoops £10K in cinco, all winners get that £10K prize. If five people win a jackpot on the new Paint by Numbers bingo, then all five take home a full jackpot.

Osmar Saldanha was one of the participants who had purchased winning tickets. When he was asked to comment on his win, he said it was a bittersweet moment, “I've never won bingo and when I win I have to share it with 100 people,” he said.

The main jackpot prize was $184, which is a tidy sum of money but when you have to divvy that up between 101 players, it’s not exactly a win worth celebrating. The organiser rounded the funds up to $190, resulting in prizes of just over $1.88 for each winner. The other 75 winners in game two shared $73 while the other 42 winners from game three shared a $54 prize.

Source: “Now That’s A Full House! 101 Bingo Players in Brazil Celebrate Winning Jackpot at the Same Time After Printing Error Listed Number 49 on EVERY Single card”. The Daily Mail. July 6, 2022.