Youthful Bingo

Gone are the days when it was a rare sight to see someone below the age of 50 in the bingo hall. In fact, although the average age of the bingo player is still between 40 and 70 years old, more and more young people are becoming interested and involved since the boom in online bingo. Advertisements on television rarely feature people (it seems to still be very much a women's game) over the age of 40 so it is obvious that the companies are trying to tap into the younger market.

I remember the first time I went to a bingo hall with my grandma. I was 4 and I sat on her lap the whole time helping her stamp her cards. From then on I went every other week with her for a year until I started school full time and I loved it. I loved her friends, the staff (who occasionally gave me lollipops if I was good) and the game itself helped me get better at recognising numbers...

Recently, I tried to introduce Grandma to Paddy Power and their variety of online bingo games as her local hall closed a couple of years ago and she always complained about missing playing it. I showed her how to play a couple of them, ones that I am familiar with and play now and again, but she is so stubborn she just complained that it 'just isn't like the old days' and that she couldn't get the hang of it. I couldn't help but tut and scowl at her for not giving it a proper go. No longer than a month later, my granddad told me that as soon as I had left she signed up and has been playing twice a week ever since!

However, my point is, I am 20 years old and my friends and I are all huge bingo fans. Because of the fun I had when I was a child, I convinced them all to come along to the bingo hall which we didn't get on with (it was too big and intense for us) but then we tried online bingo and play once a week together showing that bingo is becoming easier for young people to get involved with.