Bingo Facts

Did you know that?….

• Eight per cent of the population play bingo – 10% of all women and 5% of all men.
• An average British game of bingo takes between four and four and a half minutes.
• The average speed of a British bingo caller is 23 numbers per minute.
• The average time to check a winning claim is 30 seconds.
• There is a “caller of the year competition” in which bingo callers compete for a two week holiday.
• The French were the first to play with Bingo playing cards, tokens and reading those numbers out loud!
• Celebrities love bingo! Denise Van Outen is a big bingo fan, as are Catherine Zeta Jones and Robbie Williams.
• Bingo became popular in Australia early in the 20th Century. It was known as Housie. Housie was held in large marquees before they moved into halls.
• In the 1800’s a Lotto game similar to Bingo was used as an educational tool in Germany designed to teach children multiplication tables.
• Throughout the 1800s Bingo spread quickly in Europe. Typically, the ‘Caller’ would draw from a bag full of wooden chips numbered from 1-90. Like today, the object of the game was to be the first to cover a horizontal or vertical row.
• In 1929, a game called ‘Beano’ was played in a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. Dried beans, a rubber stamp and a cardboard sheet were all that these Americans need to get their minds off the sting of the Depression.
• The most common reasons for playing bingo are because it’s fun, it offers companionship and the chance to socialise.
• It wasn’t until a New York toy salesman named Edwin Lowe, observed how players shouted the word, ‘Beano’ after winning was the modern game of Bingo born.
• Mr. Lowe introduced the game to his friends in New York where one of them mistakenly yelled ‘Bingo’ for the first time in her excitement, and ‘Lowe’s Bingo’ was soon the talk of NYC. Lowe asked players to pay him $1 per year to allow them to call their games Bingo as well…
• By the late 1940s, Bingo games sprung up all over the country with thousands of games being played every week.