Mintel Suggests Bingo Is Now Drawing a Younger Crowd

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Bingo has always been the preferred pastime of the elderly and most bingo halls have clientele comprising of people between 60 and 70 years of age. However, according to a study conducted by reputed market research consultants Mintel, all this is slowly changing.

It is well known that Bingo is very popular among retired folk who enjoy spending a quiet evening playing a game of bingo with friends in their neighborhood bingo hall but new trends unearthed by the study reveals that an increasing number of young, well-to-do urban professionals are frequenting online bingo halls today. The target demography of bingo has witnessed a sea change with the proportion of players below 45 increasing to a significant 62% from the 46% more than ten years back. This would mean that almost 3 out of every 5 bingo players are below 45 years of age.

So what could this proliferation of youth in bingo be attributed to? Online bingo has grown exponentially over the past 5 years, clocking 60% growth in 2008 alone. Britain has the largest chunk of online players-almost 20% of Britain’s bingo revenue is on account of online bingo. Young, urban professionals enjoy a chilled out game of bingo from the comforts of their home. Bingo also offers an opportunity to socialize, be it in land-based giant bingo halls or on networking forums in online bingo sites- something very few busy professionals have time for these days. According to 32 year old marketing communications consultant, Anna Maloney bingo is “simple and retro, you get a bit of a buzz. You chat to other players so it’s sociable.” She added that she enjoyed playing bingo online for half an hour, a few times a week as a ‘bit of fun’. These sentiments are echoed by many of her counterparts too who enjoy playing online bingo every now and then.

Britain’s bingo population has seen a slow decrease in its ordinary working-class membership. Instead, today over 700,000 of its estimated 3.5 million bingo players are between the ages of 18-24. More importantly, in 1995 the proportion of manual workers who patronized bingo constituted a hefty 48.5% or almost half the playing population. Today this number is down significantly to below 37%. Skilled and white collar professionals today make up more than 38% of the bingo players in Britain, up by almost 11% over the same period.

This analysis will come as great news for online bingo operators. Online bingo has proven to be quite popular versus their land-based counterparts. Operators have brought in innovative formats, exciting and fast paced bingo variants, impressive bonus structures and the benefits of social networking on to online bingo sites attracting patrons across age profiles.

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