“There was a farmer who had a dog …” You know the rest.
For most of us, our first encounter with bingo is as a farmer’s dog. The legacy of bingo as a children’s campfire song is undeniable.
As we got older, so did that dog. Bingo went from being a song to a game. Five column cards filled with random numbers became the essential game of chance. The name of that dog became a cry of victory, filled with the joy and satisfaction of beating the odds.
For several decades, bingo was played in large halls, where hundreds of people played with cheap cards, hoping to get a big score. Over the past decade, the game named after a farmer’s dog has made the leap from the VFW to the WWW. Bingo as a song is still tailor-made for young children at the campfire, but the game has changed with the times and has moved online.
Bingo has always been one of America’s hidden hobbies. According to IGWB, an estimated 1.6 billion people attended bingo halls nationwide in 2003. To put things in perspective, that staggering turnout is almost more than the number of people who attended movie theaters and venues. bowling alleys, combined.
Over the past four years, the number of bingo sites on the Internet has increased twenty-one, 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, more than 45% of bingo sites are free to play only. Around 70% of all online bingo sites are totally free or mostly free with some premium paid games.
Online bingo shows overwhelming popularity here in the United States. According to Bingo.com, 90% of online bingo players who use free gambling 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, and more than 80 percent of those players were between the ages of 25 and 55. Somewhat more surprising is the low percentage of players over the age of 65. Traditionally, bingo is associated with seniors who spend their twilight years waiting for the jackpot. However, Bingo.com found that only two percent of free online bingo players are over 65 years old.
While Grandma still finds her way down the hall to start her game, Mom is sitting at home dialing to find her game. Bingo.com estimates that more than 85% of online bingo players access their games from home and more than 50% play it every day.
One of the main reasons Mom is addicted to Grandma’s online version of the game is because of the autoplay feature that many sites offer. In an automatic game mode, players simply let the cards play for them. As long as the cards are bought and a game screen is on on a computer, Mom can do things around the house while the games are being played. Additionally, many web pages include live chat screens in addition to their games, so online players can enjoy the atmosphere of the bingo hall from the comfort of their home.
“Keeping chat lines up and running is very bandwidth consuming, so we tried to create multiple games without it,” said Anthony Wayne, online consultant for Curaçao-based bingo site BingoHouse.com. “Every game failed miserably. Chat is very important to the success of these games.”
Before long, Grandma could even log in for her games. If it does, as traffic trends seem to indicate, revenue from the online bingo market could skyrocket. According to Parlay Entertainment, 70% of players in bingo halls already play online games. If the 1% of bingo players left in the room alone move to the internet 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 received a new look. As more and more bingo games come out of the room and onto the web, players will keep moving forward. The future of bingo is online … and so is the money you win.
