History of Bingo in the UK
If you were to sift through the press headlines in the early 1960s, you would have thought that bingo swept off the United Kingdom by storm. Terms like ‘Bingo Bonanza’ and ‘Bingoholics’ were rife as media coverage focused mainly on women, deeming the new phenomenon — coming off the heels of the Betting and Gaming Act, which catalyzed commercial bingo operations — as ‘dangerous.’
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Nonetheless…
If you were to dig deeper, you would have quickly realized that the history and tradition of the random numbers games in Great Britain span way back to the 16th century.
Known as lotto, tombola, or housey-housey, they took hold during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603). Although initially envisioned as a rich people pastime, even the poorest citizens enjoyed playing ‘shove groat’ in alehouses.
The advent of Protestantism in the Interregnum years (1649-1660) brought severe restrictions, as the Puritans frowned upon games of pure chance. Still, the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, with Charles II emerging as King in 1660, marked the beginning of the gambling renaissance: Public and private games became hugely popular, and gaming operations were often run as business endeavors with huge profits.
The very first event resembling a conventional bingo game took place in 1716. As the Lord Mayor of London prohibited women from playing dice, ladies — not impressed at all with such interference — objected creatively and envisioned a game that included wheels marked with numbers.
At the time, a state lottery — instituted by Queen Anne aiming to support government revenues, similar to antebellum times in the United States — was six years old.
Even though this game provided a way of rising from rags to riches, or at least comfort in those days, the price of tickets made the whole endeavor beyond the reach of the poor social classes. Moreover, tickets were available only for a short time, and the circulation was insufficient to satisfy public appetites.
Not surprisingly, illegal games of random numbers — also known as ‘Little Goes’ and ‘Numbers Clubs’ — became highly popular in the London slums. They remained virtually unchecked throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, causing significant social challenges due to the illegal nature of operations and ensuing losses such as beds, wedding rings, or any other possession.
Rising from a fecund soil of inveterate gamblers…
The earliest description of bingo in the United Kingdom dates back to 1838, when the archaeologist John Stephens, during his travels to Mexico, stumbled upon the game La Lotteria.
Played by hundreds of people, the pastime consisted of paper or cardboards covered with figures in columns and rows, while players used grains of corn to mark numbers called by the ringleader.
The almost identical game has already been played in Malta, Spain, and Italy. Having army garrisons and the Royal Navy ships in those countries, bingo quickly spread among ranks. By 1914, the game was a predominant military pastime, using numbers 1-90 and five figures per row in the same fashion Stephens described in his Mexico chronicles.
When the First World War broke out, bingo became a rather popular choice not only among service members in trenches but also as a way of raising mess funds in the forces. Despite a government ban in 1906, which prohibited cash betting, regulatory ambivalence about bingo paved the way for housey-housey as liberal churches began to run fundraising games in England.
The Armistice had brought high expectations for war heroes and working classes, but, in reality, it resulted in hard times and severe poverty, particularly in the manufacturing regions of Great Britain.
To no surprise, bingo took even firmer hold among citizens as private, amusing housey-housey games became rampant in interwar years.
This, in turn, resulted in the first regulation addressing the commercial bingo operations in the UK, the Betting and Lotteries Act in 1934.
As the Second World War required even more human resources to enter the ranks of Army and Navy, more Brits became exposed to bingo. Compounded with high popularity among women back home, the climate was ripe for yet another legislative intervention, which came through the Small Lotteries and Gaming Act of 1956.
Both bills, 1934 and 1956, allowed housey-housey — that is, bingo — to be played for “the ostensible support of charities,” so much so that even the Catholic Church used the game as a major fundraiser in the post-WWII years, with no moral objections whatsoever.
And that brings us to the early 1960s headlines: The Betting and Gaming Act of 1960 was nothing more than a regulatory framework to legalize existing social gaming and to effectively control the street betting deemed a social problem.
This legislation came into effect on January 1st, 1961. On January 3rd, the first commercial bingo club opened in the UK, marked by long waiting lists for membership and queues of people waiting to play the game. The average attendance in the most prominent clubs was close to 150,000 players a day.
By 1963, according to official Government documents, there were more than 14.3 million individual members of bingo clubs nationwide, amounting to a staggering 26.7 percent of the nation.
As the Betting and Gaming Act imposed a robust regulatory framework, the legal foundations of probably the most popular pastime in the United Kingdom were solidified, and the durability of this game — shaped through fundraisers, fairgrounds, the armed services, women, and socializing in the exciting leisure activity — has been confirmed.
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UK Bingo Today
Nowadays, millions of Brits enjoy bingo, whether at the gaming halls or the iGaming destinations, looking for excitement, fun, and a stroke of pure luck while testing their choices.
As the majority of action moved away throughout the years toward the striking features of online bingo sites, the internet also delivered more diversity as punters of all generations and backgrounds enjoy thrills at their own convenience.
Contrary to its American counterpart, the UK bingo encompasses 90 balls, three rows, and nine columns. Each row consists of five numbers and four blanks, and each column contains ten numbers. There is no ‘free space’ in the center of the card, called ‘ticket.’
A bingo session is run by a caller who announces the prize before the start, calls out the randomly selected numbers, and validates winners and their tickets. There are several winning combinations, such as Four Corners, Line, Two Lines, or Full House.
Contemporary bingo halls increasingly use computerized systems, including RNGs to call numbers and various screens to present the outcomes.
The commercial volume of bingo operations at the UK’s land-based venues is astounding, despite the waning effects of brick-and-mortar halls’ power to draw crowds, which caused a significant drop in their numbers in the first decade of the 21st century.
According to H2 Gambling Capital, the 2021 volume of gross wins in this vertical is estimated to £227.8 million, representing 95.9 percent year-on-year growth compared to 2020. The projections for 2023 foresee the jump to £273 million — some seventeen million pounds short of pre-Covid levels two years ago.
Current State of UK Online Bingo
As a diversity of fun and social aspects of the game remain highly sought-after commodities in any interactive bingo variant played nowadays, the offerings encompass myriad websites nowadays.
In fact, the internet marked the new era in British bingo, as it removed the game from the precipice of land-based halls’ ability to attract players onto the new heights of current popularity among the UK’s punters.
The rebranding process, if you will, took several stages to complete.
First, a face-lifting phase enabled bingo to transform from a pensioners-only game to an all-in pastime. Courtesy of well-devised user interfaces, live chats, online interactions, variety of software features, the new dimension of bingo — one of premier entertainment and fun — emerged across the vastness of desktop and mobile devices.
But it took a bit more than a revolutionary tweak in delivery to empower a digital resurgence of bingo.
The magic formula also included one of the most regulated iGaming markets globally, a measured approach to advertising that targeted the younger demographic, and a network of reputable affiliates to sustainably deliver the best possible offerings to the market.
Finally…
Compounded by the growth of an educated cohort of punters — who are able to recognize advantages of reputable online jurisdictions and certificates to verify the fairness of RNGs in online bingo rooms, as well as to distinguish between the good loyalty programs and incentives — the rise of online bingo in the United Kingdom turned out to be meteoric.
Furthermore, such popularity resulted in the revival of traditional brick-and-mortar bingo, which successfully penetrated pubs and clubs across the country. The emergence of drag bingo at these places provided for new ways to attract players nationwide.
To put the impact of online bingo into a financial perspective, the overall volume of 2021 gross wins in interactive venues in the UK is projected to exceed £217 million, almost equaling its land-based counterpart, according to H2 Gambling Capital.
UK’s Bingo Popularity
As the National Bingo Game Association — in charge of running The National Game [of bingo] twice a day, 364 days a year — reports, over three million people regularly play bingo at least twice a week.
More than eight percent of the UK population enjoys this pastime — ten percent of all women and five percent of all men. Christmas is the only day off bingo has in Great Britain.
The total amount of prize money distributed by The National Game to date is more than £1 billion.
Equally, the list of UK celebrities who indulge in this game nowadays is off the charts.
If it weren’t for a win that her dad got while playing bingo, Catherine Zeta-Jones would have never attended theater school, which enabled her to launch her acting career. Robbie Williams played bingo at his local club with Daryl Hannah in his music video for Feel. And, in case you wonder, even the Queen plays this game, usually opting for Palace combination rather than House.
Culture and local traditions are embedded in the game as well. The number 59 is named ‘Brighton Line’ in homage to the original engine number used on the London-Brighton route. The number 30 is called ‘Dirty Gertie,’ paying respect to Cockney’s rhymes and slang.
Close to ninety percent of all online bingo punters are under the age of fifty today, as the UK represents one of the fastest-growing online markets in the iGaming industry.
Thus, for all intents and purposes, the future of bingo in the United Kingdom seems bright, as it always was, which, in turn, puts yet another onus on the increasing number of players when it comes to choosing wisely, making prudent decisions, and playing well within the limits of individual budgets.
And that, consequently, explains our effort, articulated here, to empower you to make the best possible decision when selecting the proper venue to indulge in your favorite pastime.
To that end, have a great one and good luck!
History of Bingo in the UK If you were to sift through the press headlines in the early 1960s, you would have thought that bingo swept off the United Kingdom by storm. Terms like ‘Bingo Bonanza’ and ‘Bingoholics’ were rife as media coverage focused mainly on women, deeming the new phenomenon — coming off the heels of the Betting and Gaming Act, which catalyzed commercial bingo operations — as ‘dangerous.’ Nonetheless… If you were to dig deeper, you would have quickly...
