Fair Bet Online Gambling

History of Newspaper bingo

Derek Jameson first introduced newspaper bingo in the early 1980’s when he was editor of the Daily Star. As part of the circulation war, he launched a game whereby bingo cards were posted through most letterboxes and players had to cross off numbers published in the daily newspapers. The games worked exactly like regular 90 ball bingo whereby a cash prize was won if you got a full house.

The game took off and other newspapers soon followed with bingo games of their own, including the Daily Mirror and the Sun. Even breakfast television programme TV-am joined in when it decided to announce the numbers from the morning newspapers every day.

In 1984 newspaper bingo was given a further boost when a million pound jackpot prize was launched. The Daily Express announced their ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ game with a glamorous TV commercial which reflected the days of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The Times even launched their own game which was modified to fit in with its image and readership. It was called ‘Portfolio’ and was based on the performance of stocks and shares.

Three decades on and many national newspapers are experiencing a fall in their circulation numbers. As a result, they are looking around for alternative revenue streams to boost their falling sales.

Online bingo games are one such revenue stream which has proved to be very successful. Different online games are available from national newspapers such as the Sun, the Mirror, the Daily Star and the Daily Mail.