What You Need to Know About UK Bingo
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should know that the UK Bingo industry is exploding! Bingo is one of the fastest growing leisure activities in the whole UK, with three million people playing the game every week! That’s more people than attend Premiere League football matches every week, which is saying a lot. If you’d like to learn more about UK Bingo and what makes it so popular, let’s explore exactly what’s going on in the UK Bingo network.
First of all, let’s start with a brief history. Bingo was first brought to the UK in 1960 by Eric Morley. Morley discovered the game while he was in America, and, when the Gaming Act of 1960 was passed, he saw an opportunity to bring the popular pastime to England. The first Bingo Hall built in the UK was in Canton, Cardiff. From there, Bingo quickly spread to all parts of the UK. Under the Gaming Act of 1968, Bingo won a big victory when it became legal to give away prizes to Bingo winners. This decision caused an explosion in Bingo’s popularity, and soon Bingo Halls were popping up in cities from Galway to Bath.
Bingo continued to grow throughout the 70s and 80s. As the Bingo industry expanded, the playing conditions were also enriched. “Posh” Bingo Halls started popping up, and the prize winnings escalated higher and higher. Soon a National Bingo Game was established playing only the Full House pattern. Another landmark in UK Bingo history occurred in 2003, when the first UK Bingo site was established on the internet. Tens of thousands of UK citizens enjoy playing Bingo online today, and it’s already become the most popular leisure activity for women aged 20 to 25.
Today, the UK Bingo industry is a giant. It employs 20,000 people, and is so valuable that even big corporations like Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN have jumped in on the deal. The two giant UK Bingo companies are Mecca and Gala. Gala alone has 171 clubs throughout the UK, and pulls in an annual profit of ₤400 million. If the company can make that much, then you might be wondering how much the actual players can win. While there are often wins in the thousands, or even tens of thousands of pounds, the record for the biggest jackpot in UK Bingo history reaches nearly one million pounds. In 2002, Paula Young from Sheffield won ₤953,000.
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