Whatever our current perception is of bingo, it has not been formed out of a void. Bingo has a long and storied history, stretching back much, much further than most of us would imagine. The game as we know it today has undergone many changes to arrive in the form it has come down to us, so let’s look at where the game might have originated and how it developed over the years and centuries.
Origins of the game
While the precise origins of the game we today call bingo can never really be known for certain, there are a few bits of historical information here and there that give us a fascinating insight into the game’s earliest iterations. As far as we can tell, the earliest form of bingo is an Italian game known as ‘Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia’—more like a lottery.
This version of the game is still widely played today, and spread throughout Europe in the early modern period. It is believed to have arrived on the British Isles sometime in the 18th Century. At this time, though, it was still much more similar to a modern tombola. There was less sense of being playing against other players. It was simply that one person would be the winner as they possessed the winning ticket.
But it was out of this more archaic tradition that the modern game developed.
The 20th Century
It is a good bet that the modern form of bingo somehow emerged out of this older tradition—but precisely when is unclear. The word bingo was once used by customs officers on a successful search. The first recognizably modern version of bingo was played at fairs and carnivals in the 1920s.
In 1942, a man named Erwin Lowe patented the modern bingo card. The game, at this time, was played mostly for fun or illegally for money. At the fairs and carnivals, prizes would be offered, rather than cash.
This was the first problem facing the game. At this time, it wouldn’t have been legal to play the game for a cash prize. This all changed with the Betting and Gambling Act of 1960, which made cash bingo games legal. The large cash prizes meant that, for one thing, players had a greater incentive to get involved, but it also meant that those running the games could make huge profits on large games.
From there, the popularity of the game exploded. Bingo halls began popping up all over the country, and it became one of the nation’s favourite pastimes. Mecca Bingo was launched, introducing bingo into 60 of their existing dancehalls. Even cinemas like the Odeon began hosting games. The brick-and-mortar bingo hall saw its peak in popularity over this period, between the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The 20th Century, then, was perhaps where bingo saw its heyday. Perhaps all the most common images of the game that are conjured up when it is mentioned originated in this explosion of popularity. Bingo today looks surprisingly different, but at the same time, plainly kept true to the roots that made it so well loved. So, where is the game at today?
The modern age
Almost as soon as the internet came into existence, enterprising users were putting together online bingo games. A free game called Bingo Zone launched in 1996, running games without cash prizes but which would tailor targeted ads based on user demographics.
As the internet generally became more widely used and accessible, with the advent of handheld smartphones and applications, bingo’s popularity once again exploded. Now, anyone could play the game, anywhere, anytime. Today, as many s 3.5 million people play online bingo with some of the biggest sites like Ted bingo, and there are as many as many as 200 different online versions of the game.
This online popularity also drove a revival in the popularity of the original form of the game, too, and there are now around 350 active brick and mortar bingo halls in the U.K. Where once it was primarily associated with the older generation, with new spins on the game like the boozy Bongo’s Bingo, it has become an activity accessible to all generations and age groups.
The history of the game is far more uncertain than you might think, then. Most tend to think of the game as an 20th Century invention, but it is for certain far older than that. How old, precisely, is not easy to say. But it seems certain that some form of the game existed as far back as the very latest period of the Middle Ages, and that the modern form we have today is not as far removed from that original version as you might think. One thing is for sure, though: bingo isn’t going anywhere anytime soon!
