So... Alright - Bingo, Three Ways

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Geoff dives into the multi-faceted world of Bingo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I've reached that point in the day when I can't avoid my responsibility anymore and I have to sit down and record so all right, which is always so funny to me because I like recording this podcast and when I've done it, I'm usually really happy and excited that I've done it. but what is it about us, like innately in our core that just makes us want to avoid responsibility or work? I consider myself a pretty productive guy, but it's only because I've had to stay on my ass. Everything sounds sexual. I have had to, I have had to really, I've had to be very hard on myself. God damn. I've got to be tough on me to make sure that I get stuff done because I think everybody has it just like just this predilection to wanting to fuck off, you know, or wanting to avoid doing the thing that needs to be done, even if you like the thing that needs to be done. Anyway, people are stupid, myself included. Today I want to talk to you

guys about bingo. That's right. We're doing a three ways today. It's been a minute since we've done one. We're going to do Bingo the game, which is where I got the idea from. My wife and her friends are currently obsessed with. Bingo the movie, which has ties to regulation. And Bingo the song, which is just a convenient third. For those that are not familiar with Bingo, it is a game of chance in which players match numbers printed in different arrangements on cards to numbers that are pulled out randomly by a Bingo host. The person who gets the correct configuration first wins, money, or prizes. I'm sure you know it well.

I'm sure you've played some version of it either at a bingo hall or at a church or maybe even at a school function. Pretty synonymous with community activity bingo is. And my wife and her friends are fucking obsessed with it. And I had been going, they go to bingo all the time. And I had been going with them. And I admit, it's fun. You sit there for two hours and people yell at numbers. And you just mad dash to try to find every version of it on a bunch of sheets of paper and color it in.

And in theory, someday you win. I never have. My wife has won twice in like the last month, much to the consternation of all of our friends. But as much as I enjoy it, I kind of get burned out on it because it's one of those social activities where you're social around people, but you don't really get to be social with people. because when you're in it, it's going. And if you may have time to eat a little bit of like your Frito pie or whatever, but there's not a lot of time to socialize and talk. And then if you do, it's discouraged because you'll get shushed by other bingo players

because people are trying to pay attention to what's going on because these people want this money. Anyway, I've enjoyed it, but I think I've done it probably 12 times this year. And that was probably my limit. My limit was probably nine or so. and then I stuck it out for a few more. But my wife and her friends, they just keep going and going. Which got me thinking,

I need to learn more about bingo. For instance, did you know that the first version of bingo was called Lotto and it was played in Italy in 1530? And I guess it hung out in Italy for a long time because then in the 18th century

there was a home version called Tombola that was created in Naples that added cards, tokens, calling out numbers, the whole deal, and you could play it at home. Let's look at Tombola. Tombola is a traditional game played throughout Italy.

Neapolitan Tambola, today's most popular version, is thought to have originated in 1734, following the King's decision to tax winnings of the similar game Lotto. Then widely played throughout Naples. Aha! There you go. Today, Tambola is mostly played during Christmas and New Year's Eve, but may also be played during family gatherings,

such as birthday parties. It's similar to the British version of the British version of bingo, but generally less formal. Okay, well, I guess we need to find out what the British version of bingo is at some point, but let's keep going here. It made its way to France, where they had a game called La Lato in the late 1700s,

and it just kind of bounced around Europe, I guess. But then in the 1920s, a guy named Hugh Ward created a standardized game at Carnivals in Pittsburgh. He copyrighted it, and then he published a rulebook which kind of cemented that version of bingo in America, I guess. Then in 1929, which is a rough year for America, by the way, this guy, Edwin S. Lowe, was visiting a traveling carnival near Atlanta, and he saw some people playing a game called Beano, which essentially followed Hugh Ward's rules, but used dried beans, a rubber stamp and cardboard sheets. Lowe, not Hugh Ward, but Lowe, took the idea to New York, where he started showing it to friends, that they started playing it, and it got increasingly popular, very, very popular in the Great Depression.

I guess the Catholic churches started to adopt it as a fundraiser, and Lowe started producing a bingo game that had two versions, a 12-card set, and then a 24-card set. By the 1940s, there was bingo throughout the United States. But what about the British version of bingo? The UK tends to favor 90-ball bingo while U.S. typically plays 75, but what exactly is the difference? This is what I want to know, and it looks like bingo port.co.com.uk is going to elucidate. for us. While the general rules stay the same between 90 and 70 ball bingo, there are some differences between tickets and winning patterns. Okay. So 90 ball, which is the UK version, has a ticket that

consists of 27 spaces and is arranged in nine columns of three rows. Each row contains five numbers and four blank spaces. Each column contains three numbers. The first column has numbers one to nine, the second 10 to 19, etc. Tickets are created as strips of six. Tickets are created as strips of six because this allows every number from one to 90 to appear across all six tickets. So if you buy a full strip of six, you are guaranteed to mark off every number called until someone calls house. Okay. I guess I'm following this.

If you have only one ticket in comparison, you'll only have a one in six chance of having a number called. Bear in mind, though, buying a strip of six tickets does not guarantee you a win because tickets contain random numbers and the structure means that each ticket has a number. an equal chance of winning. The odds of winning are slim, just like your chances of winning the lottery. But that's what makes bingo so much fun.

Okay, well, 75 ball bingo, the U.S. bingo, which I am familiar with, seems more complicated, but is quite simple once you've gotten your head around it. Really, because I was having a lot of trouble following what I just read to you guys. Each card has five columns, which are split into 25 squares,

filled with 24 numbers. The middle square is a free space, which can be marked off immediately. America loves free spaces. Each number in the five columns corresponds to a letter at the top of the card, B-I-N-G-O, example B-7, I-23 in 42, G-55-0-74. This can be helpful when you're trying to hunt down your numbers.

Unlike 90-ball bingo, 75-bingo cards are independent from one another. They don't run in strips. This means that if you play with more than one card, it's possible that you might have to mark off duplicate numbers. It's for this reason that you might find 70. ball bingo to be slightly slower than 90 ball bingo. Patterns also vary in 70.

Is this boring as all hell? It seems like they're both bingo. They've just presented differently. I imagine that you're going to prefer the version of bingo that you played first and you are most familiar with geographically. I imagine British people probably really love British bingo, and I imagine American people probably really love American bingo. and if we mix and match, we would probably be discontent with the other options.

But that's the nuts and bolts of what bingo is and where it came from. But what about today? How many people play bingo today? How many people play bingo today? There's approximately 60 million bingo players in the U.S. accounting for 1.2 billion visits annually to commercial, charitable, military, and casino bingo operations. 43% of bingo players are men.

57% are women. Interesting. It says here there are about 100 million people worldwide that play bingo. That actually seems a little low to me. If 60 million in the U.S. alone play it, but why would the internet lie? I wonder how much money, how much money does bingo make? This is from the Texas legislature online. Gross receipts from the conduct of charitable bingo total $20.8 billion.

Bingo prizes awarded have exceeded $15 billion, and allocations to local jurisdictions have totaled approximately $340.4 million. The total amount of charitable distributions from the conduct of bingo exceeds $1 billion. I don't know what the time frame is. Oh, this is 2019. This is from the winter of 2019 economic. impact of charitable bingo in Texas. Well, that helps a little bit, but what about lottery and bingo worldwide? Revenue in the lottery and bingo market is projected. Ah, see, this is

information that we want. This is from Statista. Revenue in the lottery and bingo market is projected to reach U.S. $145 billion in 2025. It's expected to show an annual growth rate of 2.37% resulting in a projected market volume of 163.71 billion by 2030. The number of users in the bingo and lottery market is expected to amount to 838 million. User penetration in 2025 is expected to hit 9.8%. The average revenue per user is expected to amount to 190.9%. So the average person spends about $190 on bingo a year, or bingo in lottery a year, I guess. In global comparison, most revenue will be generated in the United States.

I guess bingo is a lot bigger in the U.S. than elsewhere. Interesting. So it's $145 billion a year industry. Oh, that's a lot of money. That's a whole lot of money. How many bingo holes are there? Oh, here we go. According to Rentech Digital, there are a total of 1,284 bingo halls in the U.S.

Okay. I wonder how believable that number is. Also, one last question. What is the largest bingo payout of all time? You don't have your fucking mind-blown? In 2012, an anonymous 60-year-old one. woman in Las Vegas hit a $10 million bingo jackpot. So, uh, some mystery 60, now 73 year old woman out there won $10 million off bingo in 2012.

God damn. The bingo we play at is for $500. Holy shit. $10 million off of numbers and letters. you know what i think a lot of that i think a lot of that seems like a dumb thing to say ten million dollars off numbers and letters so many things are ten million dollars off numbers and letters but you get you get what i mean well there you go i guess it makes sense that my wife and all of her friends like bingo because it's a hundred and forty five billion dollar

year industry so it sounds like a hell of a lot of people like bingo 1991, a movie was released called Bingo. It featured a poster that had a very happy-looking dog with sunglasses on and a bright background with like a blue kind of fuzzy bingo. It looked like the happiest movie ever made. It just looked like a cool dog having cool times. It was directed by a guy named Matthew Robbins. Oh, he's more known as a writer. He's done a lot of writing.

He wrote, for instance, Gilmoldo Toro's Pinocchio and Crimson Peak and a bunch of other stuff, but he directed, oh, he wrote Mimic and Mimic too. Interesting. He directed Corvette Summer, which is something that will get covered in 3 a.m. Theater at some point in whatever form that idea takes. Dragon Slayer, the legend of Billy Jean, which is a fucking classic. Great film. Amazing stories. The TV series, not the movie. Batteries not included. Also a good film. and bingo. Wow. That's an interesting, that's an interesting career. I don't remember exactly how bingo first made its way to fuckface and regulation. I'm sure one of you could send me an email to Eric at jeffspots.com and remind me, but the first time I remember talking about it was during the break show, opening up cards from Bingo the movie. And they were insane.

one of the cards we saw was a dog, the dog bingo. What kind of dog was bingo? Bingo was portrayed by lace of female border collie. Just an absolutely adorable border collie. Oh my god, she was adopted from a shelter. Oh.

Bingo was a really smart dog. Great actor in that film. So it's a movie that comes out in 1991 about a female border collie directed by the guy who directed Corvette Summer and a Paul McCartney music video. And it is as balls to the wall insane for a kid's movie

as you would expect from the 80s and very early 90s. This movie starts off with a dog at the carnival named Bingo. There's all kinds of carnival stuff going on. You get a sense that this is a loving carnival. Everybody seems to love Bingo. He's running around, delivering pails of water and helping people out. And then Bingo's owners are dog performers. They have a bunch of these poodles that they seem to genuinely care about.

And then you find out that Bingo is like the Cinderella of the dog performers and is kind of abused and look down upon. And then at some point, Bingo has to fill in for one of the – by the way, there were two minutes into the film. This happens. Bingo has to fill in for one of the poodles because the dog steps on, I swear to God, a nail that's four inches long. Like there's just a scene where a doctor very comically pulls this giant nail. If it was in your body, you would have to be subdued. Like it was so fucking deep into this poor dog's leg. It must have gone halfway up to its dog elbow.

They yank that out. And then they say the dog's going to need a couple of days to recover, which is ludicrous. So bingo has to fill in. He's doing a great job. He's doing all the stuff in front of the audience at the carnival that you do. Or like, maybe it's not a carnival. It's a circus. Regardless.

Same shit, you know. and he has to jump through a ring of fire and he can't do it. And that's where we get bingo can't do it, which is a card we pulled out of a pack of bingo the movie cards on the break show, which made us laugh because it was just this dog staring at fire and it just says bingo can't do it. And then something about it endeared bingo to all of us. And it became kind of a running thing in the universe and we still open up bingo cards

to this day. Now I'm actually excited to open some up on the break show because having seen it the movie, I'm going to understand every scene and be able to talk about it and relate it. But here's the point when the first truly insane thing happens in a series of escalatingly insane things. The man dog trainer decides that bingo is useless, so he's going to kill him by shooting him with a rifle. And the lady says, no, no, no, don't do that. Let's just let him go and find happiness. And then bingo doesn't want to leave because he loves them and because it's the only home that he's known, even though they're really mean to him.

So she keeps trying to like, you know, Harry and the Henderson's him, get out of here. Nobody wants you. And he keeps coming back and being sweet and stuff. And finally, she's like, oh, screw it. Just kill him. Give me the gun. And so they just start trying to kill the dog. He has to flee through the woods while they're popping off shots at him.

And you think like, holy shit, is it crazy to show people shooting at a dog in an irreverent kids movie? Buckle in. It's not the last time. it's going to happen a lot. We then see Bingo as he's running away. Oh, I forgot to mention, Bingo has a flashback about the fire

and why he doesn't want to go through it. When he's a puppy, he was at, I think, like a pet store or a puppy mill locked in a cage and there was a huge fire. And it's just like pictures of sad dogs and flames and firemen saying, we can't save all the pets,

just grab the ones you can, and somehow I guess he made it out of that. He was one of the ones, but it's heavily, it's actually pretty directly stated that a lot of these animals around Bingo died horrible, painful, brutal deaths. Once again, kids' movie.

Bingo then goes to a cemetery to visit his mom, leaves flowers for her. She's got a she's got like a fountain at her grave. It's very nice. And then he's just like kind of wandering the woods and it cuts to the humans. The Bingo's boy he's going to meet.

is like this little kid and his brothers are riding BMX's through the woods and they all jump this little creek and the youngest one, which is Chucky who is the kid that ends up being you know bingo's human he's scared to do it and so they leave him behind

and the other kids are like isn't that you don't you want to go back and check on your brother and he's like I don't care he should be able to jump he's a baby or says whatever dumb stuff the kid then tries to do it falls off the bike cracks his head open bleeding

falls face first into a puddle of water or into this little creek and is gonna die like he's the kid who drowns in a teaspoon of water bingo sees it, drags him out and this is where we start to get a sense of the true power of bingo then bingo

we don't see this but it is directly stated that it happens bingo then undresses the kid hangs up a clothes line in the woods dries all the kid's clothes sets up a small tent for them and then nurses the kid back to consciousness.

Then as the kid is getting dressed and none of this seems weird to him, a bear shows up and tries to eat them both. And so bingo helps the kid get up in a tree and then they hide from a bear. Second time in like 10 minutes, this kid has his life saved by bingo. By the way, a bear's climb.

Bears climb better than they walk. They wouldn't have been safe in the tree at all. They spend the night in that tree. And Bingo's parents, who are, by the way, television royalty, I have to point out. His mom is none other than Cindy Williams, who played Shirley on Laverne and Shirley. And his dad is David Rash, who has been in a million things. He was most recently I saw him in succession. He was a great character in succession.

But when I was a kid, he was Sledgehammer, which was one of my favorite television shows, didn't last long. Kind of a spoof on Dirty Harry. and he was very, very funny in it. Anyway, the kid just doesn't come home and the mom seems upset. The dad doesn't seem to care at all. He's a place kicker for the Denver Broncos and his only concern is his foot,

which he shows constantly. If you are like Nick and you are into feet and toes, you are going to love this movie. David Rash's foot is prominently displayed the entire film. If he's driving, he's got his foot on the dashboard. If he's eating dinner, his foot is all. on the dinner table. He's always massaging it or rubbing it or doing some kind of a treatment to it because their whole life revolves around his foot and how well he can kick. I should also mention that

the dog did CPR on Chucky and that's how he didn't drown. After he pulled him free, he did actual dog CPR to save his life. I glossed over that. I want to make sure I double background and mention that. Then pretty early on, the kid sings the bingo song with the dog, which you expected had to happen, but they get it out of the gate. Actually, the bingo song gets sung constantly, either mockingly or earnestly throughout the film. There are montages of Bingo and Chucky playing video games at arcades. They play a game called Badlands. Was that a real game, by the way? Let me look. 1990, I think, is the game that they were playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1990 Badlands is a car driving game. Absolutely Atari game. Yep. They play that for a little bit.

They bond. They do all kinds of stuff. I don't, I, my, notes are pretty extensive here and they I could probably go for another 30 minutes going scene by scene for this film but I feel like maybe that's too in depth so let me just hit some of the more ridiculous moments in this film because it is a truly insane piece of cinema at some point bingo has gets pulled over by cop and has to do a sobriety test they make bingo walk on two legs he passes the sobriety test at some point on a road trip the family eats at a place called Dukes America's Best Dogs. And I think the joke in

the movie is that the guy is actually cooking dogs. He finds stray dogs and then he chops them up and then that's what the hot dogs are made out of. And Bingo has to escape that of course. But I wanted to see if it's a real place because it looks amazing. It's like in this old barn in a fucking cornfield. Dukes, America's

best dogs. Best hot dogs, probably, I should say. Yeah, if anybody knows, if anybody has seen the movie If anybody has seen the movie Bingo and is familiar with the location of Dukes, it looked like a real place. It looked kind of like a biker born in a cornfield. The family was on a trip from Colorado because the dad pretty early on in the film gets traded from the Denver Broncos to the Green Bay Packers.

And so they have to move cross country and they stop and eat at this place along the way. I'd love to know if it's a real restaurant And if it is, I'm definitely taking the regulation guys there Because it looks amazing. Otho from Beetlejuice is actually the chef At that place and Bingo and the other dogs End up turning the tables on him And they cage Otho and another lady

And then Bingo drives a truck into a barn Just physically drives a truck into a barn At one point he discovers kidnappers This is where we get the main bad guys of the movie he discovers that these kidnappers have kidnapped his family in an RV so he This is the end of the show

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