How many of these Bingo facts and how much of this bingo trivia did you know?
• More than 3 million people play bingo regularly in the UK whether on line or at live, land-based events
• The majority of bingo players are women in the UK about 85% as research tells us. But an increasing number of men are now beginning to play online.
• Carl Leffler, the professor who originally developed all the bingo cards played allegedly went insane as a result of his work.
• The average age of bingo players is 45 but 30% of bingo players are under 35. The die-hard older players and pensioners bring the average up, God bless them!
• The majority of bingo players in the UK have 1-3 kids under 15, household income under £30K and drive a small to medium size of car.
• Bingo is the only gambling game that members of the armed forces are allowed to play. That's interesting, and must be an argument for Bingo to be treated more favourably tax-wise as compared to other gambling.
• Bingo is still used in Germany as an educational tool to teach students multiplication and number tables.
• The current bingo game originated from an Italian Lottery called Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia in 1530s.
• An average British bingo game takes around 4 to 4.5 minutes. I guess that depends on the speed with which the numbers are called!
• Most bingo players also play slot machines or video slots. Why not? While waiting for the next game to start!
• According to one survey, winning is only the 5th reason for playing bingo. Personally I don't buy into that- I reckon the survey questions were skewed!
• Mathematically there are 1,474,200 unique bingo card variations.
• The number of possible arrangements of the numbers on a bingo card is
552,446,474,061,128,648,601,600,000. Please don't ask to see my workings on this one...
• In North Carolina USA, it's illegal for a bingo game to last over 5 hours.
• 8% of the European population plays bingo.
• 67% of online bingo players play at more than one bingo site. Interesting.. is that because people have found friends on other sites, or just because people want to dip in and out to sites to gain advantage of their special introductory offers?
• 68% of online bingo players smoke, compared to 28% UK average. Are they trying to tell us something? And what about drinking? And what percentage of Bingo players gamble... oh... I guess that's 100%!!
• 75% of online bingo players DON'T go to land based bingo clubs. Personally speaking, you don't know what you're missing!
• 96% of online bingo players have won bingo at least once.
• According to suppliers, purple is by far the favourite ink colour in dabbers used by bingo players.
If you got more than half right, then you must be a real Bing nut! Congratulations!
If you didn't know any of them, then you've learnt a lot. So it's a win-win situation, just like Bingo itself. If you have a win, great, if not, it's fun, you chat to people, make friends, and have a laugh!