Bingo is making a comeback – and it’s all thanks to young women

Millennials and Gen Z are flocking to a new take on an old pastime, where karaoke, cheap drinks and Dirty Dancing makes for raucous good fun

It is a Friday night in Tooting, south London, and the queue for the bar is snaking across the bingo hall. Two 20-something women are on stage having a dance-off over a contested call. The prize? A cardboard cut-out of John Travolta. An entertainer in a satin Pink Ladies jacket – the theme is Grease vs Dirty Dancing – yells his own versions of traditional bingo calls across the room. “87, I’ve never been to Devon,” he says. “33, I need a wee.” The jokes are weak, but the crowd goes wild. 
Bingo has had a millennial makeover. Rank Group, owner of Mecca Bingo, which has 52 venues across the UK, said 44 per cent of its new customers in the year to June were under 35 years old. The group returned to profitability last year. And Buzz Bingo, which operates 82 clubs, said around half of its 200,000 new visitors in the year to January were under 35 years old.
Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – have also been drawn into the fold. Lucy Goodsell, 21, is dressed for a night out, wearing a silky black shirt, enormous hoop earrings and an inflatable crown (her prize from a previous round). “I love a bit of bingo, me. I like the thrill.” She cackles over the pop of another prosecco cork. “Doesn’t that sound sad?” Her friend announces she forgot to pick up a bingo dabber pen so has instead been using her pink lip liner. It doesn’t seem to have slowed her down. Lucy’s group of girlfriends come to this bingo hall once a month.
Positioned strategically near the bar is another group of friends in their early-to-mid-20s, clustered around bottles of pink fizz. “Bingo is something different – it’s fun, safe, and silly… you can just let loose,” says 22-year-old Amy Hull. Her friend, Sarah Carroll, 26, wins the interval karaoke competition with a dramatic rendition of Hopelessly Devoted to You, and is met with a raucous round of applause. The prize is a giant blow-up microphone, which she wields as she answers my questions. 
“We’re all first-timers, I just saw the event on Facebook,” she says. “I love Dirty Dancing, and it’s more of a girly [night].”
It is a distinctly female environment, with men either relegated to the edges of the room or sat looking miserable, obviously there at the behest of an overexcited wife or girlfriend. Even the bingo calls have been tweaked for a new generation of players. “Two fat ladies” (88) is banned. “We’re not fat-ist, here,” says the entertainer.
Mia Bravo, 23, is here with her mum Penny, a loyal member of the Tooting club. “I’ve noticed a lot more young people coming in,” Penny says. “The bar’s cheaper for youngsters and the bingo is a bonus to them.” A pint is £4.30, a large glass of wine £5. Her friend chips in: “I think that’s where the stigma is. When I said to you about it,” motioning to her daughter, “you said, ‘I’m not going with all them old ladies,’ and I said, ‘you’ll be surprised how many young people go.’” 
Not long ago, bingo seemed to be in terminal decline. The smoking ban in 2007 was a challenge, but this downward trajectory grew steeper with Covid. 75 bingo clubs have shut their doors in Britain since 2020, says Miles Baron, chief executive of the Bingo Association, due to a combination of the pandemic and the spike in energy prices following it. “You can imagine what [some clubs] cost to heat,” Baron says. “We’re clawing our way back, but it’s a slow incline.” 
Its renaissance among young people is partly down to concepts such as Bongos Bingo, a “a crazy mix of traditional bingo, dance-offs [and] rave intervals,” which started in Liverpool but now has nearly 50 locations worldwide. Dabbers Social Bingo operates two sites in London with the tagline: “Your nan’s fav game just had a full-blown boozy glow up.” 
At Hijingo in Shoreditch, east London, another “multi-sensory” bingo club geared to a new, younger audience, players are greeted with neon lights, robotic dancers and extravagant prizes including European holidays. You can purchase fancy cocktails and, on Sundays, bottomless brunch. These fit in with a broader trend: competitive socialising. Bingo fits with the rise of activity bars in cities including London, Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol that offer games alongside food and drinks. Now you can play darts, ping-pong and crazy golf, or even get to grips with axe-throwing, shuffleboard or simulated clay pigeon as you enjoy your pint or cocktail.
But as well as flocking to boozy bingo nights, people are also reviving the traditional bingo hall. In many ways, Buzz Bingo Tooting is exactly as you’d expect. There are Wetherspoons-esque printed carpets, disconcertingly bright lighting, slot machines and pensioners. One thing is different – there is no reverential hush. Instead, the music is ratched up a notch, and a particularly excitable table of women at the front start dancing through the aisles. Fleur Traynor, a 32-year-old nursery worker, grew up with her mum playing bingo “but I haven’t been for eight years,” she says. What brought her back? “Cost of living crisis, innit. It’s a cheap night out.” 
In big cities especially, where a round of drinks won’t give you much change from £30, the cheap and cheerful food and booze in bingo halls is a draw. “A lot of things have risen in price, bingo has stayed the same, so by default it has become better value,” says Baron. Younger people – mostly women – come because it’s “authentic, it’s safe, 80 per cent of the attendees are female, unlike pubbing or clubbing. You don’t have to dress up to go, but you can if you want to. And it’s multi-generational,” he says.
Sarah Calakovic is the branch’s regional manager. Buzz Bingo Tooting, like many bingo halls, offers touchscreen tablets that do the hard work for you, but younger people are drawn to the “the retro experience of [playing on] paper,” she says. Themed bingo nights have proven especially popular with a younger demographic – as well as Grease vs Dirty Dancing, Calakovia has recently presided over “battle of the bands” theme nights, one with Charlie Simpson from the noughties boy band Busted as a special guest, and “raunchy evenings” featuring oiled and muscly Magic Mike inspired dancers. 
“As we came out of Covid, people were absolutely looking for ‘experiential’ evenings,” she says. She points out that some Gen Z-ers are choosing to drink less alcohol, or to forgo it entirely, and bingo is one example of “experiential leisure” that works booze-free. Regardless, “there’s an atmosphere,” she says. “It’s a really fun night out.” I never thought I’d say this about a bingo hall, but I’m inclined to agree.