“There was a farmer who had a dog…” You know the rest.
For most of us, our first encounter with Bingo is like a farmer’s dog. Bingo’s legacy as a children’s campfire song is undeniable.
As we grew up, so did that dog. Bingo mutated from a song to a game. Cards filled with five columns of random numbers became the essential game of luck. The name of that dog became a cry of victory, full of joy and satisfaction of overcoming adversity.
For several decades, bingo was played in large halls, where hundreds of people played with cheap cardboard cards, waiting for the big score. Over the past decade, the game named after a farmer’s dog has made the jump from VFW to WWW. Bingo as a song is still tailor-made for little kids at the campfire, but the game has changed with the times and moved onto the internet.
Bingo has always been one of America’s hidden pastimes. According to IGWB, approximately 1.6 billion people attended bingo halls across the country in 2003. To put things in perspective, that staggering attendance number is almost greater than the number of people who attended movie theaters and bowling alleys combined.
Over the last four years, the number of bingo sites on the Internet has increased twenty-one-fold, from five in 1999 to 105 in 2003. Free bingo sites definitely seem to be the most popular place to start a game. According to WhichBingo.com, over 45% of bingo sites are free games only. Around 70% of all online bingo sites are totally free or mostly free with some paid premium games.
Online bingo shows overwhelming popularity here in the United States. According to Bingo.com, 90% of online bingo players using free gaming sites are North American.
Eighty percent of those who played free online bingo last year were women, according to Bingo.com. Surprisingly, the average age of an online bingo player (male or female) was 41 years old, with more than 80 percent of those players between the ages of 25 and 55. Somewhat more surprising is the low percentage of players over 65 years of age. Traditionally, bingo is associated with senior citizens who spend their twilight years waiting for the jackpot. However, Bingo.com found that only two percent of free online bingo players are over the age of 65.
While Grandma is still finding her way down the hall to start her game, Mom is sitting at home dialing to find her game. Bingo.com estimates that over 85% of online bingo players access their games from home and over 50% play every day.
One of the main reasons mom is addicted to the online version of granny game is because of the autoplay feature that many sites have. In an autoplay mode, players simply let the cards play for them. As long as the cards are purchased and there is a game screen on a computer, Mom can do things around the house while they are played. In addition, many websites include live chat screens in addition to the games on it, so online players can get the atmosphere of the bingo hall from the comfort of their home.
“Keeping chat lines up and running requires a lot of bandwidth, so we tried to create several games without it,” said Anthony Wayne, an online consultant for Curacao-based bingo site BingoHouse.com. “Each game failed miserably. Chat is very important to the success of these games.”
Before long, Grandma could even log in for her games. If she does, as traffic trends seem to indicate, revenues from the online bingo market could skyrocket. According to Parlay Entertainment, 70% of bingo hall players already play games online. If the remaining 1% of the remaining floor-only bingo players move online in the next two years, online bingo could become a $700 million market.
The old song tells of a farmer who had a dog. That dog’s name now belongs to a game of luck. Over the years, that game has been given a new look. As more and more bingo games come out of the hall and onto the net, players will keep moving forward. The future of bingo is online…and so is the money to be won.