Session prices range from free or low-cost to hundreds of dollars, and prizes from small monetary or material prizes to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Addressing these gaps, our article aims to investigate and compare the impact of bingo in the lives of people from three geographically discrete communities in Victoria, Australia where bingo is popular: Aboriginal people in Gippsland and East Gippsland in the south-east of the state, Pacific migrants in Mildura, in the north-west, and older people on low fixed incomes in the Victorian capital, Melbourne.

As members of each of these communities face a range of sometimes overlapping forms of discrimination, exclusion and disadvantage, including racism, poverty and ageism, we aim to identify what conditions internal and external to gambling enable, facilitate, intensify or mitigate gambling harm for bingo players in these three communities.

We chose an instrumental multiple-case study approach and conducted our study in the Australian state of Victoria to enable us to engage with the complexity and diversity of bingo playing and players while at the same time examining one regulatory environment.

Consequently, we chose three geographically distinct populations that would offer different perspectives on bingo playing and its context. Further, again informed by our partnerships with Aboriginal organisations, we wished to explore a wide range of impacts, including on communities, and so used the concept of gambling harms rather than the more psychologically and individually focused concept of gambling disorder.

We gathered data between September and October through individual, pair and group interviews with 53 bingo players, individual and pair interviews with 13 stakeholders and 12 participatory observation sessions of bingo games. Interviews with bingo players were up to an hour, with some stakeholder interviews being up to 90 minutes, and were audio recorded.

Field notes were taken after participant observations. We used criterion sampling [ 35 ], with criteria for interviews being that participants were either bingo players from one of the case study sites or an expert stakeholder with knowledge of bingo playing, other aspects of the case study sites or gambling and regulation in Victoria.

An interview schedule with possible questions was developed by the research team, and provided a basis for interviewers. The interviews with members of the Aboriginal community were conducted by Aboriginal Research Fellow, [ 31 ] and those with the Pacific community largely by Mildura Pacific community member [ 31 ].

Interviews were conducted in a range of domestic, commercial and community settings. We did not record numbers of potential participants who chose not to participate. Stakeholder participants were approached by telephone, email and face-to-face. One stakeholder was known to Maltzahn prior to recruitment.

Interviewers explained the purpose of the research as part of their introduction. Participant observations and data feedback were carried out by combinations of the authors listed here, six of whom are female and one of whom is male.

Similar themes were raised consistently by participants towards the end of data collection at each site. The data was thematically analysed using NVivo ; coding was carried out by two team members.

Analysis aimed to identify broad themes from the data on experiences of bingo playing as well as differences across communities and populations. Our approach was informed by the Australian guidelines for researchers conducting research related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people [ 36 ].

One of several ways we did this was by appointing researchers from the communities concerned and reporting the findings back to communities in accessible ways, including through a short film by Aboriginal filmmaker, Caden Pearson for more detail, see [ 31 ].

Footnote 1 We received ethical approval from the La Trobe University Human Research Ethics Committee HEC and HEC Community participants are identified by a number plus G for Gippsland, M for Mildura, MAP for Melbourne; stakeholders are identified by S and a number, with those from the case study communities combining S and their area identifier.

Only a minority of participants from our three case study populations said they had been harmed through bingo playing, however, for these people, the harms identified were, at times, significant. Interviewees described harm when playing traditional paper-based bingo, through exposure to EGMs commonly called pokies in Australia and from PETs.

They also raised concerns about intensified harms caused by changes to bingo and some identified broader social and regulatory factors that increased harm. Many participants across the three populations felt that bingo was overwhelmingly or only good: some felt that it was harm-free, describing inherent safety features such as time- and cost-limits and its cognitive stimulation and social rewards.

Correspondingly, several participants explained that bingo was not generally seen as a form of gambling. Other participants saw harm levels as determined by external factors.

Using Langham et al. Financial harms included bingo players not being able to pay for basic living costs and pawning possessions such as phones to get cash to replace money spent on bingo or to play bingo.

Financial harms led to emotional strain. A Mildura participant M7 described her heartbreak after coming home to her sleeping children, having lost at bingo, knowing her family was down to its last boxes of cereal and noodles.

Stress was at times mitigated in Pacific and Aboriginal communities by strong family links as relatives would often help out: however, for some, assistance came with a sense of humiliation at having to ask, or see their parent ask, for help.

Additionally, it could cause stress for those asked to give money, particularly when they could not afford to do so, another way that harm was felt by people beyond the gambler.

Illustrating this, one Gippsland stakeholder explained that extended family members were impacted:. Financial and emotional strain also damaged relationships and fed conflict with partners, children and grandchildren. One Mildura woman in her 40s described her reaction to frequent bingo losses:.

It changed how I would go about my daily activities. Work-related harms were raised, albeit infrequently, by participants. A small number described bingo players missing work commitments because they had played bingo until late or leaving work early to get to a bingo session.

As a form of gambling, bingo has inherent risk. However, the uneven levels of gambling harm for bingo players suggest that a range of causal factors facilitate gambling harm: the risk of significant harm is neither inevitable nor unchangeable. Our data highlighted both gambling-related and external causal factors, to which we now turn.

It was clear from participants that traditional paper-based bingo could cause harm and that bingo harm was not a new phenomenon, particularly for people with low incomes. Price was determined both by the price of an individual book and the number of books people bought.

While some players bought only one book, it was usual to buy several, and not uncommon to play six books. Particularly in the more expensive venues, players also commonly bought a stripped-down game of bingo called flyers, as well as instant lottery tickets, lucky envelopes and raffles, which increased the cost of a bingo session.

Not surprisingly, those playing the low-cost versions were least likely to report harm. Attention to the cost of bingo in part explained the different patterns of harm amongst our three groups, with the Melbourne group of older people, who were more likely to play low-cost bingo and were in some cases wealthier, less likely to report harm.

The most common form of harm for bingo players was where bingo was offered in close proximity to EGMs: bingo here appeared to be used to draw people into the venue with the expectation that they would then gamble on the EGMs. Some people used EGMs trying to recoup money spent at bingo and others spent their winnings on them, as one male Gippsland participant described:.

Several participants knew bingo players whom they believed to be addicted to EGMs, describing significant associated harm.

In several cases, participants saw such harm as resulting from a combination of conditions such as trauma or poverty with the contiguity of bingo to EGMs, as illustrated by a Melbourne participant in her 60s:. This particular friend of mine, … her son a few years ago committed suicide, because of the [gambling] debt he was in… [S]he also loved to play bingo.

The second distinct context for harm described by participants was newer forms of electronic bingo, including, as described above, automated tablets PETs which require little intervention from players, and online bingo.

While PETs were not available in all the venues we visited, where they were, they were very popular and many players combined a PET with paper-based games. While few players can play more than six paper-based books, PETs in Victoria have the technical capacity for around concurrent games.

Some venues set their own limits, commonly around High prices create a bigger prize pool, providing a substantial incentive to play, as one stakeholder working in an Aboriginal gambling program described:.

More commonly, however, players said they did not trust online bingo, found it boring or did not have the computer skills to play.

Successive regulatory changes in Victoria have enabled more expensive bingo games, bigger bingo sessions and larger prizes [ 31 ]. These changes include abolishing bans on rolling jackpots and removing caps on the cost of books and numbers of players allowed per session.

Bigger prizes appear to be a motivator for players to spend more at bingo, with some players not realising that there are more people vying for prizes and that less of the ticket money is distributed each game for example, because the jackpots are rolling.

Stakeholders also argued that the regulatory compliance regime was weaker than the past, with bingo operators able to operate with less government scrutiny. Stakeholders in particular argued that bingo was being regulated and managed by government as if it was still a small community concern, as one articulated:.

And I think that is really problematic given that these have become million-dollar businesses. The deregulation of bingo has created more pressure for bingo operators to adopt potentially more harmful approaches, such as PETs and high-cost bingo sessions.

One industry stakeholder explained the market pressure to provide PETs:. Regulatory changes interact with external factors. Racialised poverty and the impact of adverse life events were two of the external factors driving bingo-related gambling harm in our case study sites.

The impetus to win money was greater among participants in the Gippsland and Mildura case study sites: both these case study communities have higher levels of poverty than the age pensioners in our Melbourne case study.

For many Aboriginal participants, the immediate cause of poverty was the absence or low level of government benefits. Stakeholders from Aboriginal community-controlled organisations highlight the cumulative impact of low benefit payments across the community; more profoundly, poverty is a legacy of land and wage theft and ongoing colonial violence, discrimination and racism.

In Mildura, many members of the Pacific community were employed in farm work that is casualised, low-paid, seasonal and hard, making it difficult to escape poverty. Poverty shaped harm in two ways: it could make gambling compelling and also more harmful, as one Gippsland stakeholder from an Aboriginal organisation argued:.

Adverse life events and stresses, at times resulting in trauma, were described by several participants. These included caring for elderly partners with dementia and other ill-health, post-surgical loss of cognitive capacity, raising grandchildren whose parents were in jail or struggling with drug addiction and family death.

Here, bingo offered escape from grief, isolation and daily strains. Stakeholders from Aboriginal community-controlled organisations also described the trauma, isolation and disconnection from country experienced by members of the stolen generations Aboriginal people who as children were unjustly removed from their parents by the government.

Again, bingo and other forms of gambling provide an escape from stress and struggle. Particularly, but not only in the Aboriginal community, adverse life events were compounded by poverty. While the majority of interviewees felt bingo was overwhelmingly positive in their own lives, gambling harm was a significant issue for a minority of players, the link between EGMs and bingo was seen as problematic by many participants and there was concern that harm would escalate as PETs and other product changes became more common.

Participants also identified regulatory weaknesses and social injustices as contributing to harm. Our data suggests that protective factors that have made bingo relatively low risk are being eroded by commercialisation, technological changes and deregulation, and that risk of harm is intensified by factors external to bingo such as poverty and adverse life events.

Bingo is a straightforward and logical game. In contrast to the myriad of permutations for the order that numbers can be called out, the steps in the game are fixed and limited. Not so, however, are its consequences, as we have illustrated here. Our data across three case study sites provides support, as Maclure et al.

This study is one of the first to examine some of the mechanics of the infliction of gambling harm on bingo players. The uneven distribution of gambling harm raises many questions about the sources of this tension and how bingo players are exposed to harm.

We were interested both in the manifestations of harm experienced by bingo players and their communities and in the contexts and causes of that harm. We do not wish to dismiss the many and meaningful benefits of bingo, which we have explored in depth in other work [ 37 ].

Both prevalence data and qualitative studies demonstrate that the majority of bingo players play without adverse effects.

Here, its many benefits — from social connectedness to cognitive stimulation — frequently outweigh the risks. Many bingo players would arguably feel their life was diminished if they could not play bingo [ 37 ].

However, echoing research from other areas, our data indicates that changes to the game risk eroding these protective factors, reducing the benefits and exacerbating harms.

Consequently, we find that bingo players in Victoria may be at greater risk of harm than previously. This is driven particularly by commercial, technical and regulatory changes that compound factors external to gambling that make gambling more dangerous for some people, such as poverty and racism, and adverse life events that cause stress and trauma.

We identify several ways these changes intensify risk. Our study illustrates the fact that bingo players frequently gamble in other ways, and that bingo is often combined with other forms of gambling such as raffles, lucky envelopes, and, of most concern, EGMs.

This has been increasingly clear in bingo research and highlights the need to recognise that being a bingo player is not inherently protective, as bingo players can engage in other types of gambling that are higher-risk.

Our data further suggests that there is a relationship between the price of bingo, size of jackpots and levels of harm. In simple terms, the more players have to pay for play, the greater the potential for financial strain on them.

Compounding this, big jackpots entice people to buy more books more often by generating hope that they can win big: in short, they make it seem worthwhile to gamble more as the potential rewards are higher than in the past. While unsurprisingly attractive to many players, bigger prizes centralise the financial benefit of bingo: rather than many players winning small amounts, which then offsets the costs of playing, bigger prizes benefit fewer people.

Additionally, large prizes screen the fact that operators can retain large sums of money. Large jackpots are relatively new in Victoria and are possible because of regulatory changes and technological changes allowing linked and rolling jackpots and bigger crowds as well as new technologies such as PETs.

For example, technological changes allow linked jackpots and games, where off-site callers are used and jackpots accumulate across multiple sites. Our study is one of the first to explore the ways new technologies such as PETs are reshaping bingo, and the impact of this.

In this, our study builds on work such as Harrigan et al. For example, the bingo described by our respondents and that we observed was commonly played in commercial settings, in contrast to the church or community halls of previous times.

Even where the clubs were technically not-for-profits, gambling was run as a business, prioritising profits over community benefit. Together, these developments appear to transform an enjoyable, economical and low-risk outing with inbuilt protective factors into a higher-risk activity where for some accruing money becomes more important than any other aspect of the game.

Several stakeholders emphasised that this is a political and regulatory choice which could, and should, be changed. The intensification of bingo as a form of gambling and the compounding impact of bingo players engaging in other types of gambling interact with factors external to gambling to generate harm.

By exploring experiences of bingo in three communities with varying levels of structural disadvantage including exposure to systemic racism, our study highlights the way racism, poverty, stress and trauma interact with gambling harm.

These often-preventable conditions appear both to make people more susceptible to gambling harm and to heighten and spread harm when it is incurred.

This underscores the need to tackle factors external to gambling, such as racialised poverty, when seeking to prevent or alleviate gambling harm and to take such factors into account when assessing the impact of regulatory and other changes.

Our study provides an insight into bingo playing in disparate parts of Victoria that illustrates more generally the transformation of a vernacular form of low-harm gambling into a higher-risk extractive phenomenon and the preventable social injustices that expose some people to greater harm.

In our study, three interlinked gambling-related changes were reshaping the game: commercialisation, new technologies and regulatory approaches. This in turn highlights government choices to allow or limit such changes. Our study provides support for the need for strategies to address gambling harm for bingo players, including by promoting fairness, protecting the benefits of bingo and preventing and constraining harm to bingo players.

Such strategies should recognise that bingo players can accrue harm through traditional paper-based bingo as well as new technologies, and that bingo is implicated in harm as a pathway to EGM use as well as in itself a risky activity.

Regulatory reform, including to manage the negative impacts of new technology as well as previous deregulation of the bingo industry, is an essential strategic tool. Such reforms should consider reintroducing limits on the cost of bingo and size of bingo gatherings and jackpots, separating bingo from EGMs and introducing caps on the allowable number and costs of PET games.

Factors external to gambling should be taken into account in two ways in devising and implementing such strategies. First, policy makers should ensure harm-reduction strategies respond to the specificities of different communities and bingo players, whether in terms of age, cultural background, socio-economic status or experiences of racism.

Secondly, strategies that tackle factors external to gambling such as poverty reduction, trauma recovery and racism eradication should be acknowledged as legitimate ways to reduce the risks of gambling harm, and so should be included and resourced in gambling harm work.

In recognising and responding to harm, policy makers must at the same time acknowledge, and seek to safeguard, the many positive aspects of bingo; ensuring that bingo players are at the heart of any policy processes will help such an undertaking.

Additionally, consideration of gambling harm, including in legislation, should be expanded to include fairness. We are not able to respond to comments but your feedback will help us improve our website.

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Home Licensees and businesses Licences and fees. Guide menu. How bingo is defined Summary Bingo is a traditional form of gambling that has changed and improved rapidly in recent years.

We consider three fundamental principles of bingo bingo must be played as an equal chance game bingo must involve a degree of participation bingo games must have a clearly defined end point.

Bingo games where the winning numbers are pre-selected are acceptable, provided that those numbers are subsequently called or displayed. The way that division is made must be transparent to the player and in particular there must be a notice displayed showing participation fees in a way that makes it readily accessible to players.

Any stakes must be returned to players, either in the particular game or in a subsequent one. Each game must be played to a single set of numbers, or symbols; drawing a second set starts a new game. Any game formats must clearly be presented as offering the player the opportunity to participate in a game of bingo.

This includes numbers or symbols being marked off and the game having the appearance of a game of bingo rather than a gaming machine. Prizes clearly advertised as being offered only for a limited period can be claimed back if they are not won.

All prizes offered in each game must be transparent to the player. Games may operate with a single player, provided there is a meaningful opportunity for other players to participate in the same game. The game must comply with the requirements of the Gambling Act and must be capable of audit, where appropriate, to demonstrate legal compliance.

Characteristics specific to bingo machines The speed of game, including the time taken to join, should be similar to that of an interval game.

Games must not have an auto play function. The amount that can be staked in a set period should be no greater than on a Category C machine.

Last updated: 27 February Show updates to this content Formatting issues corrected. Is this page useful? Yes this page is helpful No this page is not helpful Report a problem with this page.

Several Wyoming counties closed a number of parlors this month. The reality is they're trying to make a slot machine look like bingo and say, 'Oh, this is now legal because it's bingo,' " Platte County Attorney Eric Alden told The Associated Press.

In Utah, the legality of bingo first came to question in The Salt Lake County Attorney's Office and the Utah attorney general said Albertsons Inc.

could not hand out bingo cards to its customers as a promotion. The grocery-store chain challenged the decision, and the Utah Supreme Court ruled for Albertsons, saying that as long as the bingo cards were given away for free to customers, it wasn't gambling.

Yocom said most of the bingo operations believe if patrons receive something of value, such as a dinner, then it's not gambling. But, he said, something of comparable value needs to be given in exchange for a patron's purchase. Diana said the meals at his clubs are priced according to market value.

He argued that it's similar to choosing between La Caille vs. The meals are basically the same, one just costs a lot more, he said. West Valley's case has caught the attention of other Utah cities. Robinson confirmed other police agencies and prosecutors have contacted him to find out more about his case.

There are at least three bingo halls in operation in Utah: Southgate Social Center, S. State; and Riverdale Dinner and Bingo, S. The bingo parlors are all private clubs but do not serve alcohol.

Diana owns the Southgate and Riverdale clubs. Last Friday, two Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies went to Southgate for an inspection.

The deputies were reportedly looking specifically at the Fast Track Bingo machines. The video bingo machines have received the most attention since the bust at Annie's. But if the bingo clubs really are offering gambling, how can they go on for years in a state that has frowned on gambling since the days of the pioneers?