Bingo History

Bingo has been played in varying forms since the 16th Century and originates from the Italian lottery (Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia). From Italy, the game spread to France and was known as Le Lotto, played primarily among the French aristocracy. Variations of bingo as we know it today were used in 19th century Germany as an educational tool to teach children multiplication tables, spelling and even history.

Lotto became popular throughout Europe and was regularly played at county fairs and carnivals. Lotto developed into “beano”, a game in which a caller would pick numbered discs from a box and players would use beans to cover their numbers when called. If a player managed to cover a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line on their card they would shout “Beano!” and claim their prize.

In the 1930’s an American travelling salesman called Ed Lowe stumbled across the game of Beano at a carnival in Germany and, seeing its huge popularity, decided to bring the idea back to America. Lowe introduced the game to his friends and the name bingo was born when one of his female guests called out “Bingo!” instead of “Beano!” in her excitement at winning.

Lowe's earliest bingo games came in two varieties: a 12 card set that cost a dollar and a 24 card set that cost two dollars. News of the game spread and a priest based in Pennsylvania came up with the idea of using bingo to raise funds for his struggling church. He bought several sets of the bingo game, but came across problems when each game produced more than one winner.

Lowe enlisted the help of a mathematician at Columbia University named Carl Leffler. Leffler painstakingly created 6,000 bingo card numerical variations to solve the problem of there being more than one bingo winner.

The increased number of bingo cards made the game a staple fund raiser at churches across the country and this new improvement saw bingo’s popularity spread rapidly. The high demand led to the publishing of bingo’s first instructional manual and later a monthly newsletter called the Blotter.

Following Lowe’s introduction of bingo, there were many imitators. Although Lowe could try and protect the name bingo, he could not claim rights to the origin of the game. Instead he asked that his competitors pay him just one dollar a year each and keep the name bingo. Thus bingo became the generic name for all variations that we know today.

During the 1930s a variant of bingo was played in motion picture theaters. One night a week customers would receive free bingo cards with their admission tickets and could win cash and prizes worth hundreds of pounds.

Bingo’s popularity continued to grow and was formalised in this country in 1968 with the UK Gaming Act and in 1986 the National Bingo game was legalised, allowing the same game to be played simultaneously at bingo halls across the country. Bingo is the only gambling activity more poplar with women than with men and roughly 70% of bingo players are women.

Bingo has changed a lot in recent years however, and is now increasingly popular with younger people of both sexes. See the BBC’s article to read more about how traditional bingo is changing.

One of the biggest changes to take place in the bingo world was of course the emergence of online bingo. 2003 saw the first UK online bingo sites and now more than 3 million people regularly play bingo online and offline. You can join in the fun and become part of Littlewoods Bingo Community today. You now get a limited time offer of a free £1 Welcome Bonus, which you can use in the bingo Littlewoods Bingo online bingo hall. Join Littlewoods Bingo online now.