Like it’s origins no one actually knows what the future of bingo will be but with online bingo now firmly seated in cyberspace it looks like it’s here to stay but I fear how it is now being over developed into many new types of gambling and companies are already targeting children to get them hooked.
My own beginnings growing up on a seaside bingo from the age of 11 now seems far away and it seems the sound of the old bingo blower ball machines is harder for me to hear maybe because there are not so many around today. However, here's a strange fact regarding electronic bingo machines. The first one was actually a Pinball machine.
It was inevitable that the number pickers would eventually become computerised and so we lose the actual balls themselves, although remember in the original game there were no balls just tokens.
Over the years there has been many variations on the game of bingo, such as Car Travel Bingo, Seaside Travel Bingo, Christmas Bingo along with many board games for the family to play, even games like “Articulation Bingo” for children on the autistic spectrum and even the development of Cards for the blind with brail.
My mate Alfred used to work at Marks & Spencers but decided he wanted to become a Bingo Caller, this is the video of his audition for caller at Judges Bingo in Tonypandy, calling numbers 1 to 90.
So the main future of bingo seems to be fully rooted in online gambling and already many companies are targeting children as their future customers. We still see the game being played in community centres, nursing homes and occasionally at the seaside. I for one hope this carries on and the tradition of the idiosyncratic and quirky number calling still remains a popular choice.
