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UK Bingo News
The game of bingo has a very long history. Bingo has it’s roots in an Italian lottery style game that was popular back in the 1500s. Through the centuries, bingo has evolved into the game that it is today. Just as the internet has changed the way the world communicates, it has also changed the way we play bingo.
Online bingo sites were first seen in the mid-1990s and in the last decade have really seen a tremendous growth. Nowhere is bingo more popular than right here in the UK. Many of the biggest names in bingo, both online and off, are based in the UK such as Mecca Bingo and Gala Bingo. While the local bingo halls are being hit by the recession and other factors that are causing a decline in players and revenues, online bingo sites are seeing phenomenal increases.
The entire bingo demographic is changing right before our eyes. Where it once was deemed the province of elderly grandmothers in local villages, online bingo is appealing to a younger market. Although it is still often known as a woman’s pastime, online bingo has begun to be more attractive to the male of the species, as well. With the growing numbers of life-changing jackpot amounts, it is no wonder that the appeal has broadened.
Online bingo is still in the evolutionary process. After all, with only about 15 years of existence, the industry is still new and changes are still being seen. With the technological advances in the structure of the internet and the software programs being created, what we are seeing now in the UK online bingo market is just the beginning.
With this explosive proliferation of online bingo sites giving UK players a huge selection of games and sites to play at, it can be a bit tough to know where the best places to play can be found. Jackpots are growing, promotions are getting bigger and splashier and new games are being created all the time. Just how are online bingo fans supposed to keep up?
That just became a whole lot easier because you can just bookmark this page and follow along while we scour the net to find the all the UK bingo news that really matters. You will be able to find the best promotions here every week. We will also share the best new bonus offers, new UK online bingo site launches, jackpot news and anything newsworthy about the entire UK bingo industry.
58 year old Audrey White, the assistant manager of her local Palace Bingo Club, has won an incredible ￡1 million lottery jackpot and it was all due to an extremely fortuitous mistake. Audrey had went into a nearby Suffolk supermarket and asked the clerk for a ￡2 scratch card. The clerk handed her a ￡5 scratch card, instead. Since Audrey had just won that amount from a previous card, she figured she would just keep the erroneous scratch card and you can bet she is happy that she did!
The ￡5 scratch card that was mistakenly purchased ended up netting her a million pound jackpot! A mother to three and having experienced financial hardships, the huge prize stunned her but she will clearly not have money worries for quite some time. She states that she plans on paying off her mortgage and adding a conservatory to her home. Audrey plans to continue working at the Palace Bingo Club indefinitely.
Talking to the press association, Audrey said, “I rubbed it off when I got home later and I just couldn’t believe it – I’m still in a state of shock.”
Discussing the handling of the money, she also said, “I’ve got a private bank account in Mayfair. I’ve got my own private banker. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to an assistant bingo manager”.
Well, Audrey, I guess you are wrong about that. Apparently this is just the sort of thing that can happen to an assistant bingo manager – and any one of us, as well.
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For those of you who are interested in exploring the paranormal and finding out about local history, you should tune into Most Haunted tomorrow evening. They will be featuring the haunted history of Dingle’s Gaumont Cinema – the Gaumont Cinema by Toxteth.
There have been reports of ghosts appearing for many, many years as well as unexplainable events such as strange lights and noises. Rumors abound, of course, given the long history of the location and building. One story tells of a man who supposedly committed suicide behind the cinema screen. Another local tale, which is of supreme interest to myself and the readers of this blog, tells of a bingo player who died while playing bingo. The story says that her heart gave out due to the excitement of the game and now she haunts the premises looking to claim her bingo.
Paranormal experts say that the cinema building is in a possible nexus of otherworldly energy. Apparently there is a triangle formed on the map of Liverpool when you draw a line from two other buildings with a haunting reputation – the Turner Memorial Home and the ancient Chapel of Toxteth.
The unique shape of the building follows the curving road and was built in 1937. The art deco style building was built to hold the first Gaumont projectomatic theatre system in Britain. An early precursor to today’s modern cinema equipment, the projectomatic system automated both the lights and the changing of the reels. There has been some theorising that problems within the system have caused the odd lights that have been spotted, yet the issue has yet to be pinpointed. When the theatre closed, the building was turned into a bingo hall for a time.
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A couple from Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, just won the competition from Tombola Bingo by guessing the mystery location where their recent adverts were filmed. More than 8,000 entires were received by the site but 52- year old Terrix Melville was the lucky winner when she correctly named the island paradise of Mauritius. Now her and her husband Raymond will be gatting their dream honeymoon.
Mrs. Melville was at her job as a call centre team manager when she got the news and she promptly called her husband to give him the good news. While the couple has been partnered for 21 years, they only recently were married three years ago. There were unable to go on a honeymoon at that time so this trip is heavensent for the couple.
Said Mrs. Melville, “Our Tombola holiday will be our honeymoon, albeit a late one. We have a year to take the holiday, so we’ll probably go for my birthday, just after Valentine’s Day. We’ll leave the biting cold and dark days for a week of warm sunshine, blue skies and walking hand in hand along the golden sands of a beautiful tropical island. It’s a dream come true.”
More and more dreams are coming true every day with the explosion of UK online bingo choices. With the incredible competition for market share, the online bingo sites are coming up with ever larger jackpots and ever more exciting and extravagant promotions such as this one.
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Three people have been prosecuted over a scam pulled at Gala Bingo in Sunderland. The three employees raked in close to ￡9,000 in cash that they were not entitled to, ripping off both their employer and the other honest bingo players.
Christian Grant was the bingo caller in Sunderland and he came up with the scheme to override the random number generator to call numbers on particular cards. He went to two other employees and convinced them to work the scheme with him, claim checkers Samantha Temple and Nandi Ndebele.
The fraud was discovered after an investigation was begun due to a customer’s complaint about odd behaviour from Grant. The bingo player said he was moving the microphone away from his mouth while calling and there were abnormally long pauses between the numbers called. She was suspicious over his behaviour and spoke to staff members. The three were arrested as a result of the investigation.
Grant has been sentenced by the Newcastle Crown Court to nine months in jail for the abuse of his position. He was handed the harshest sentence due to his cheating the players as well as the company and because he was the ringleader of the scheme. Temple was sentenced to community order with one year’s supervision and Ndebele was sentenced to the same plus 100 hours of unpaid service.
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The petition going around against the bingo tax was submitted via the 10 Downing Street website in September with more than 2,500 signatures of indignant bingo players. The government has finally issued their response to that petition in their typical double speak.
“The government continues to recognize the important social role played by bingo clubs in many communities. Budget 2009 introduced a package of reforms intended to simplify the bingo tax regime, continuing a process of reform that began in 2003. Bingo participation fees became VAT exempt and bingo duty was increased to 22%. The bingo industry had been campaigning for some time for VAT exemption on bingo participation fees and the bingo duty increase should not be seen in isolation”.
Basically, what the government is telling us is what did we expect? Bingo operators wanted the VAT gone and now it is. Clearly the government wasn’t going to lose anything on the deal so they raised the tax to compensate for it. It almost sounds like they are considering the VAT exemption to be a favour to the industry, doesn’t it?
Since that budget of April 2009, we are seeing roughly four bingo clubs closing down every month. This is a very serious situation for UK bingo that the government clearly is doing their best to ignore.
The full text of the government response is far too long to put into a blog post but you can find the entire text posted at the 10 Downing Street website, if you wish.
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Two women have captured the essence of today’s bingo world with six in-depth interviews of avid bingo players and a series of incredible photographs. The exhibition was first displayed at Preston Hall before making its way to Stockton’s Mecca Bingo Hall at Chandlers Wharf. When it is done being displayed at the bingo club, it will go to its new home in the Stockton Museum Service for prosperity.
Leigh Thomas, a 28 year old student of oral history at Teesside University and Amanda McHale, 41 year old photographer who graduated from the Cleveland College of Art and Design, collaborated on the massive project. Thomas is a regular bingo player herself and it is a tradition in her family, with three generations of enthusiastic bingo players. McHale had been exposed to bingo years ago in working men’s clubs and was fascinated by the changes that have occurred to the game through the years.
Mecca Bingo was one of the sponsors of the project as well as The Sponsors Club for Arts & Business. It is no wonder that Mecca would want to get involved in a project that would record the history of the beloved game.
Stuart Booth, the manager of the Stockton bingo club, said, “We have been catering for Teesside bingo players since the 1960s and when we were asked to get involved to archive some of the history for future generations, it was an invitation we could not ignore”.
Thomas spent weeks interviewing six women and recording their stories and their personal perspectives on what bingo means to them and the changes they’ve seen. McHale took hundreds of photographs of the bingo club and the players.
Thomas gave her reasons for the project as, “I have been attending the bingo for many years and decided it was time to record the stories of the people who go there. I wanted to explore the sense of community that is so important to myself, my family and the people who go there”.
McHale was fascinated by the evolution of the industry, saying, “I wanted to capture the astonishing transformation that it has undergone. The 21st century bingo hall isn’t just a world away from the worn, weary Victorian theatres and the calls of ‘legs eleven’. With coffee shops serving lattes, bright lights, electronic gaming and breakfast menus, bingo in 2009 is a different universe”.
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It seems like every other post we do lately is news of yet another newcomer to the UK online bingo market. This is a good thing for players, though. Competition such as we are seeing gives impetus to bigger and better promotions, bonuses and jackpots and that is never a bad thing to happen.
First up is the new Silk Bingo, brought to us by Dragonfish, 888 Holdings and Globalcom. Any time that a site opens as part of such a huge network, you can expect two things. One is that the site will be able to access some huge progressive games and two is that the site is going to be very similar to others already out there. That is the case with Silk Bingo, I’m afraid – it offers very little in terms of innovation except the one unique slots game called Steps to the Stars.
The other newcomer is Bulldog Bingo, coming from Interactive Playnet, the people who just recently introduced Churchill Bingo. It is also aimed at the UK bingo player with very British graphics that include, of course, a bulldog as well as a bobby, a telephone box, Big Ben and a red double decker. These graphics seem to be more aimed at Americans on holiday in the UK rather than residents as they are so very cliché.
Bulldog Bingo is part of the You Got Bingo network so there aren’t any real surprises to be found. The caller is definitely English rather than American so that is one difference between this new site and its sister site, Churchill Bingo. Other than that, though, it’s pretty much the same as the rest of the sites on the network. We would have liked seeing at least one unique feature but alas, there was nothing notable that we could find.
While it’s nice to have ample choice when looking for an online bingo site, we think it would be better if some of these cookie cutter sites would offer at least some innovative features or unique games. It just doesn’t give a lot of incentive to test out new sites or return to them if they are merely offering the same old things that we can find on a number of other sites.
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Between Northampton and London, Beacon Bingo clubs recently gave two lucky bingo players more than £23,000 in jackpot money. Both jackpots were won on IGT Bingo Terminals. IGT is one of the leading suppliers of bingo equipment in the UK land casino and bingo market.
First, back on 23 September, a regular bingo player hit the jackpot of £9,661.89 while playing the Kitty Glitter machine at the Northampton Beacon Bingo club. Then on 6 October, a player hit on Larry’s Lobstermania machine in the Cricklewood, North London Beacon Bingo club. The October win of £13,330.04 is the largest jackpot hit to date on a UK bingo terminal.
The winner of the bigger prize, also a regular player, said that she planned on “spending the money on a luxurious holiday to somewhere very hot and finishing her kitchen in style”. Congratulations to Mrs. W for the fantastic and historical win.
As Beacon Bingo Chairman Brian Mattingley says, “all our bingo venues have thise bingo terminals, which means everyone has a great chance to win fabulous jackpots”.
We are starting to get used to online bingo players hitting these sort of larger amounts but it has been rare in the land-based bingo halls. Perhaps the smoking ban and tax increase have not damaged the land-based bingo industry quite so bad as we had been thinking?
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I was just exploring the latest online bingo site to hit the UK market and it looks great to me. It’s called Bing On and has a very clever logo with the “o” being a graphic of a power switch. The site has a number of unique features that make it more interesting than the average online bingo site.
They have all the popular games on tap including both 75 ball and 90 ball bingo, along with a good selection of slots, video poker and even table games. That part is similar to many of the other sites on the market. However, they offer a very unique social media experience not often found in the realm of online bingo.
Upon registering, you will find yourself on a social networking page very much like Facebook. You are able to add a photo, configure your privacy settings, update your status whenever you want, visit other players’ profiles and add friends just like on a social media site. You can even send a personal message directly to another player on the site. To add to the social aspects, Bing On also features a full-fledged discussion forum for members.
The company behind this latest online bingo venture is Mediterranean Gaming Ltd. With over a decade in the industry, you know you’ll be dealing with a highly professional company that enjoys an excellent reputation in the gambling world. The software they chose for the platform is the NYX Interactive which is a very smooth platform that has a somewhat different feel to it than some of the more popular platforms.
Goodies will abound on this site, if the beginning is anything to go by. They start with a 200% initial deposit bonus and you can cash out your winnings, most unusual for an online bingo site these days. Further deposit bonuses are available of 50% matches. They already offer 4 progressive jackpot games for big money possibilities and they have a loyalty scheme in place to reward regular players.
I see this newest addition to the UK online bingo market taking off in a big way. So many sites have opened that feel like another carbon copy but Bing On has a unique feel and atmosphere to it. The added socialization features are sure to be very popular as that is often given as the top reason for players to participate in online bingo.
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Bingolore is running a wonderful promotion right now for any film enthusiasts. Known as the London Film Festival At the Movies promotion, you have multiple chances to win a film related prize right up until 29 October.
There is four hours of continuous bingo action in Room 2 on the Bingolore site, each day from 3pm to 7pm. During that period, they are featuring movie trivia games with free DVDs as prizes. Then later at 9 pm in the same room, they are offering a special chat room game called Chat Game Movie Stars where you could win a pair of tickets to the cinema for a newly released film.
The big prize game with this promotion takes place tomorrow evening. The full house winner will get ￡50 in cash along with a 6 month paid subscription to Love Film. If you can’t make it in, simply go over and pre-buy your tickets now.
It is nice to see Bingolore offering some unique promotions. We’ve long known of them as a very inexpensive place to play with tickets starting at only a penny plus they have some excellent progressive jackpots on some of the side games. At least five offer progressives – Big Top Tombola, Clover Rollover, Pet Luck, Lucky Ladies and Snow Queen’s Magic.
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