Successful casino games all share a secret: while they’re all based on a simple formula, that formula lends itself effortlessly to the invention of different variations. Think of how real online slots have developed from mechanical “fruit machines” into immersive video games, or how casino table games such as craps and roulette have moved into the live online casino world. The formula hasn’t changed, but the delivery’s completely different. The same applies to bingo.

It may be one of the oldest casino games, but bingo has lost none of its appeal. In fact, more people are now playing bingo for fun than ever before. Many fans of online casino games consider bingo to be one of the best games to play at the casino because it’s simple to understand, sociable and offers the chance to win real prizes. 
Another reason for bingo’s increasing popularity is the growth in the number of bingo themes. This trend isn’t limited to online casino bingo games such as Slingo. In fact, there are multiple great new bingo themes that you can try for yourself. Here’s a taster of bingo ideas that lie in store for you.

Fitness bingo

Keep fit, play bingo! That’s the formula of the popular trend known as fitness bingo. The first thing you need to do is create bingo cards with a list of actions, movements and fitness-related activities. The squares will be covered with phrases such as “10 scissors,” “5 crunches,” “shuffle on the spot for 30 seconds,” “knee-high jog on the spot for 30 seconds,” or “10 squats.” Make up your own or find printable cards online. The important thing is that they shouldn’t require any equipment. Now draw activities at random. Players perform them and cross off the matching squares on their cards.

How you draw the activities is up to you. One fun technique that’s especially good for fitness bingo online is to make a spinner wheel. You know, the kind you’re familiar with from money-wheel games or casino table games such as roulette. Fill the segments of the wheel with the activities included on the bingo cards and spin! It may seem strange at first to combine casino games and exercise in this way, but fitness bingo is one of the most popular bingo themes at the moment.

Song and dance bingo

For a bingo variation that’s more relaxing than fitness bingo but just as much fun, try music bingo. Collect a bunch of short clips of your and your friends’ favorite songs and put them together in one file. To work best, clips should be about 10 seconds long. Customize some blank bingo cards by entering the names of artists and songs on the grid instead of numbers. As the music plays, everyone marks off the songs and artists they recognize until someone shouts “Bingo!” It’s a great way to get your family playing bingo.

If you want to combine music and dance, there are a number of possibilities to explore. One dance bingo variation which is popular right now features the trendy dance moves you might know from video games such as Fortnite, viral TikTok videos and so on. You customize your bingo card with trendy dance move names (“Moonwalk,” “Dab,” “Stanky Leg,” for example) and go! Players have to perform the dance moves before marking them off and those who get a bingo have to yell out “Dance!” and perform all the moves in their winning row.

Bingo showtime

If you’re hosting a bingo event, you can add to the fun by creating your own cards on which players can match a number of items related to their favorite sport or show. Sports fans could match famous players, kits or important dates in the history of the game. You can also tie your calls into parts of a specific team’s history, number of championships won, most games lost in a row and so on. It’s also a chance for players to wear the uniform of their favorite team and help themselves to the drinks and snacks they’d have at a game.

Popular television shows are another surefire way to up the fun factor. Tie your cards and calls into shows your friends enjoy and get them to dress up as their favorite characters, for example, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Geralt of Rivia, Tony Soprano or Daenerys Targaryen. With so much great TV content online these days, you can have a different bingo TV tie-in every week! 

Another cool bingo dress-up opportunity is famous dates or periods from the past. It’s always a laugh when people wear the flower-power clothing of the 1960s or dress up as the jazz-loving guys and dolls of the 1920s. Or you could have people wear what they imagine they’d have worn on a particular occasion, such as the Declaration of Independence.

Speaking of dates, holidays lend themselves particularly well to bingo tie-ins. Whether it’s the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick’s Day or Christmas, you can customize your bingo cards and have people dress up for the occasion.

Quiz bingo

Quiz bingo is bingo dressed up like a quiz. Quizmasters like it because it stops strong teams from dominating quiz nights. In the same way that random number generators keep things fair in online slots, quiz bingo introduces an element of unpredictability so that even the weakest competitor stands a chance to win a prize.

If you’re hosting an evening of quiz bingo, you need to generate a lot of questions and answers beforehand. It makes sense to have nine questions per round because then you can lay out the answer boxes in a 3×3 grid. People divide into teams and each team gets an answer grid with numbers randomly placed in different locations. The quizmaster reads out the questions numbered 1-9 and teams write their answers for each numbered question in the appropriate box.

Once the round is done, the numbered questions are read out in random order. Teams mark their cards and the first to mark three numbers in a row, column or diagonal shouts “Bingo!” The quizmaster checks the team’s answers and awards them 10 points less one for any incorrect answers in the winning combination. The quizmaster then repeats the process, with the next three teams shouting bingo getting 8, 6 and 4 points, minus points deducted for wrong answers.

With a 3×3 grid, all teams will fill a row, column or diagonal when the sixth number is drawn. No team can win before the third number is drawn. You can experiment with the size of the grid. A list of 15 questions would have a 5×3 grid like in real online slots.

This option is a great way to introduce the office to bingo as it offers a fun and fair experience.

Sports bingo

Sports bingo may not revolutionize the game, but it’s a great way to introduce people who think they might not find it that appealing to another hobby that they enjoy. You can create your own bingo cards so that it’s not about numbers, but other things related to your favorite sports such as famous players, iconic matches, sports gear or important dates from that sport’s history. You can take this idea even further and make it about a specific sports team.

This take on bingo could also be a great lead-up to an exciting match in front of the TV, allowing you and your friends to get even more hyped up for the thrilling event. All you need to do is make your own custom bingo cards and swap out the bingo balls with an easy alternative, such as foldable slips of paper.

Death, inverse or battle royale bingo

This take on bingo literally flips the concept on its head by changing the goal. That’s right, the point of the game is not to be the first to complete a row but to not complete a row at all! Yes, the last person standing (or sitting) without having completed a row is declared the winner of the game. This version embraces survivor-style gameplay and is an absolutely nail-biting version of bingo. 

With regards to what you need, you can play using standard bingo cards and other bingo equipment. You can spice it up with some suspenseful music to really add an extra layer of atmosphere to this already exciting game and maybe even add a horror theme to your cards and dress code to really help people get into the mood. 

Customize your bingo board

Patterns are the essence of bingo because they help determine who wins the games. Like the paylines in real online slots, the horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines hold out the promise of winning combinations of five squares in a row. But there’s no reason not to shake things up a little by changing the patterns on your boards to make up different board-covering rules. Here are some patterns that work well:

• The Postage Stamp pattern fills the top-right four squares, while the Arrow pattern can cut across the board vertically, horizontally or diagonally. 
• The B-N-O or Layer Cake pattern requires players to mark off three alternating number lines. Vertical lines make the B-N-O pattern, while horizontal lines make up the layer cake pattern. 
• The L pattern fills the first column and last row, while the Crazy L pattern fills the last column and last row. 
• The Cross pattern has two lines, a horizontal line down the middle and a horizontal line across the middle row. 
• The Checkerboard pattern looks like – you guessed it – a checkerboard.

You can also make up patterns that resemble any number, provided they fit on the board. And the Blackout Pattern covers the entire board – whoever marks their card first earns a special prize!

Play the best online bingo games at Borgata Bingo

Whether you’re looking for bingo game ideas for adults or younger folk, we hope you found some inspiration from our guide and bingo game examples. However, there’s only one place you can enjoy the best online bingo and slots the internet has to offer. At Borgata Bingo, New Jersey residents can try their luck on a range of exciting games, including the classic 75-ball and 90-ball bingo games as well as jackpot bingo and slots, Slingo and many more exciting titles. See what incredible gameplay is on offer when you play online bingo. Download the app via iOS or Android or register to join the party online at Borgata Bingo.