A New Generation of Bingo Players
A recent report by the British Bingo Association puts a big dent in the popular stereotype of old lady bingo players. The study actually finds significant increases in the number of younger people playing bingo games — both in traditional bingo halls and in online bingo sites.
The Bingo Association's study found a 15 percent increase in the number of younger bingo players. It reported that more than 8 million people played bingo in the UK in 2007, and that nearly 50 percent of them were under the age of 45.
Another recent study found that 51,000 women under the age of 35 in the UK
play bingo online. The most interesting finding: 12 percent of these young women play online bingo more often than they have sex. One 22-year-old woman — playing in a traditional
bingo hall with her mother and grandmother — responded to this finding and remarked, "I don't know if I'd find bingo more satisfying than that, but I suppose the joy of getting a big win is bound to last longer."
The Accessibility of Online Bingo
Analysts attributed the rise in bingo's popularity to several factors, including endorsements by bingo-playing celebrities like Catherine Zeta Jones and the accessibility of
online bingo to an Internet-savvy generation. The key to bingo's success, they added, would be in bingo site owner's holding on to their traditional base of older players while simultaneously expanding their appeal to younger bingo players.
Representative of the bingo industry were generally pleased by the new research findings. A spokesman for the Bingo Association said, "For something to be around as long as bingo has, it has to have something going for it. We see a broad range of ages, and it's good to watch new generations discover that their grandmother was on to a good thing."
