Big Money Bingo

Bingo is a game that appears to be on the rise. Internet Bingo is part of the recent plethora of gaming sites that offer various forms of entertainment in return for taking usually small amounts of the punters money. All these small sums of money add up fairly quickly - the company that owns Mecca Bingo which has been leasing the way in the UK online bingo industry recently announced that it had made a profit of £53m in the last year.

With the potentially huge amounts of money in the hands of the companies that are running the events, some of this is inevitably passed along to the punters in the form of prizes with the intention of attracting more to take part in the game.

The National Game is something of a marketing masterpiece, Bingo lends itself perfectly to such a game as there has always been a distance between the people playing and the individual calling the game. It’s not such a big step to go from having a caller that draws the numbers for ten people in the room to having the same caller drawing for a hundred, or for ten different sites, it’s merely a matter of technology, transmitting the numbers as they’re drawn.

It works as well. The BBC recently reported that the biggest bingo prize in the world had been awarded to a 38 year old cleaner from Coatbridge, the prize was said to be in the region of £1.2m, an enormous sum of money that was immediately split with her friend and playing partner. Before this the previous mark stood at £1.1m, won in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales.

As these reports make the news, it becomes an attraction to people, there is no skill involved, merely blind luck and it doesn’t cost all that much to take part. As more people are attracted to take up the game, so their playing fees are included in the jackpot and the sum gets bigger, it’s a fairly good indication of the growth of the game that the jackpots are increasing consistently.

There are inevitably problems that come with such jackpots. Bingo has a strong social aspect, traditionally, part of the enjoyment of the game is playing it with other people, and this has led to agreements that winnings will be split. This is fine and relatively light-hearted when it comes to your conventional small winnings; people tend to act slightly differently though when they have just found out that they’ve got enough money to pay off the mortgage.

Bingo prizes continue to grow, and the game grows with it, arguments are inevitable whenever money is involved, and no one is keen to take steps to stop such arguments as they are a product of the social element of bingo that has contributed to the growth of the game. Bingo is big business, serious stuff, and here to stay.