While bingo became popular in the USA early in the twentieth century, it actually dates all the way back to the year 1530 because it was then that a state-run lottery called “Lo Gioco del Lotto d’Italia” was started in Italy and you can actually still play this lottery every Saturday. The French then decided to start with the lotto trend in the late 1700s.

There was actually one version used where a playing card with nine columns and three rows, with four free spaces per row was used.
The caller would reach into a bag and pick out wooden chips marked with the numbers 1 through 90. 1 to 10 would be for the first column, 11 to 20 for the second, and so on. The first player in the game to cover one whole row with these wooden numbers was the winner. These wooden numbered lottery type games soon became a huge attraction throughout Europe.

The game of Bingo as we know it today was made popular but the late Edwin S.Lowe, a toy salesman from New York. One day while at a carnival said to be inAtlanta, Georgia, Lowe was observing a game called “Beano” (It was called Beano because people used dried beans to mark their cards and yelled BEANO when they had a full card and that person would win a small prize) and noticed how captivated the players were by the game and decided to take it back to his friends back in New York.

It was only during one game where a lady got so excited by her win that she shouted out “Bingo!” instead of the accepted call of “Beano”

After much laughter at the new call, Lowe thought about it and he actually preferred this term and it was then that Bingo was born. “Lowe’s Bingo” became a huge success, and by the mid-1930s, home bingo games were being created all over the country. It was not only in homes that it became popular, it did not take long for churches and social clubs to realize the fund-raising
potential of the game.

Today, 48 states and more than 100 Native American Casinos offer legal bingo of some sort. You can find bingo clubs that are small enough to fit in a church basement all the way to games that are so big they can pack-out a 2,000-seat
hall.

Today, Bingo players come from all walks of life but even though most people say there is no stereotypical bingo player, most players that play Bingo today are women over the age of 45. Most Bingo Players like to socialize, which is why they go to bingo halls to meet up with their friends to compete in fun games of Bingo and catch up on the week’s local gossip. Although most bingo
players are over the age of 45, surveys show that bingo is being discovered by young people every day as a new way to socialize. This is due to the fact that

Bingo has moved online now allowing people easy access to a game at any time of day with the same fun as actual bingo halls because of the chat rooms. The bottom line? Bingo is fun for all ages (As long as you are over 18 if you are playing for real money).