Bingo in the United States
In the U.
S.,
bingo was originally called
Beano where a dealer would select numbered discs from a cigar box and players would mark their cards with beans and yell "beano" if they won. Bingo has come a long way since the country fair to the online bingo hall.
A New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe renamed the game bingo. Then a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approached Lowe about using bingo as a fund raiser for the church. As bingo started being played it became increasingly popular, and by 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played in bingo halls weekly, and today more than 90 million dollars are spent in bingo halls each week in North America alone.
Online bingo you say? But little old ladies who play bingo don't necessarily have internet access. Land-based bingo halls are huge, and are not only played in by little old ladies. More people visit the bingo halls in the USA than they visit the cinema. In 1999, the US bingo industry alone had a turnover of 5.1 billion added to the fact that the rules are simple and that most people don't consider it to be gambling. Little wonder that online bingo is growing to become big business.
Multi-player online bingo falls into three basic groups; Free Online Bingo, Game Sites with online bingo and Pay to Play Bingo. The core of the industry, however, is the Pay-to-Play online bingo halls and now there is hundreds of bingo pay to play bingo halls spread across the world on the internet.