Slingo Boom Bingo Sites

Slingo Boom, or boom bingo as it is also called, was an exotic variant of 75 ball bingo that was only available to play at sites powered by Gaming Realms until it was retired in early 2019.  Other versions of Slingo (the ones that are more akin to a slot machine than to bingo) are more widely available.

1. Who are Gaming Realms
2. Origins of Slingo
3. What was Slingo Boom
4. How to play Slingo Boom
5. Was it any good?

Who are Gaming Realms?

Gaming Realms plc is based in London and has a board of directors that reads like a Who’s Who of the online gaming world, bringing a wealth of experience from other operators including Sky Bingo, Foxy Bingo, Betfair and bwin.party.

The company provides a gaming platform and licensing via their subsidiary Bear Group including a suite of original games (including games with a skill element such as Magic Mine and Baking Bonanza as well as multiple variants of Slingo) from Slingo Originals (who used to be a subsidiary but now appear to be separate).  A third US/Canada based subsidiary, Blastworks, specialises in social gaming and produces free-to-play Slingo games for the App Store (Apple only, not Android).

Gaming Realms have also licenced the Slingo IP to other providers including Instant Win Gaming who make the Big Money Slingo game (basically a scratchcard).

Gaming Realms are very mobile focused, with 80% of their audience playing on mobile devices.

Origins of Slingo

Slingo was invented in 1996 by Sal Falciglia Sr (a businessman from New Jersey) and was first launched on AOL.

Slingo is so called because it is a cross between bingo and a slot machine.  Players have to complete lines and coveralls on a board that resembles a bingo card, by marking off numbers as they are spun on a set of slot machine reels.  This turned out really to resonate with players and Slingo theming has cropped up everywhere from lottery scratchcards to gaming machines in bricks and mortar casinos.

Real money online versions of Slingo first came on the scene in 2015 after Gaming Realms bought the rights. and the multiplayer version, Slingo Boom, was launched in May 2016.

What was Slingo Boom?

In single player versions of Slingo, the player receives a set number of spins with which to try and complete the board and is then given the opportunity to buy extra spins. Basically, it’s a slot machine with vastly extended gameplay.

In Slingo Boom, players competed against each other to win a prize pot (sometimes fixed, sometimes determined by player stakes) and this shared liquidity meant that it was essentially a type of bingo rather than a slot machine. Instead of there being a fixed number of spins, the game continued until someone won.

How to play Slingo Boom

• In Slingo Boom, the board looked like a 75 ball bingo card (the kind where the centre square is not free)
• The game was played in what looked like a bingo room complete with chat
• As in regular 75 ball bingo the first column only contained numbers from 1-15, the second column only contained numbers from 16-30 and so forth.
• Each player had one card only (giving everyone an equal chance of winning) and these were priced from 25p – £1.
• The numbers and symbols came up – 5 at a time – on a set of reels immediately below the board.
• The cards were all different but the numbers and symbols that came up after spinning the reels were the same for all the players.
• The numbers that could appear on the reels were those that could appear in the column directly above, e g reel 1 contained numbers 1-15 only.
• The three symbols that could appear were the Joker, the Super Joker and the Devil.
• The Joker marked off one number in the column above it and the Super Joker marked off one number anywhere on the board.  Slingo Boom was unlike the single player versions in that players did not have any control over where the Joker and Super Joker were used; the number to be marked off was randomly selected and auto-daubed and was not necessarily the best choice strategically.
• The Devil was a blocking symbol which appeared on reel 3 only.
• Single player versions of Slingo have a free spins symbol but this did not feature in Slingo Boom.
• A “Slingo” was a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line with all 5 numbers marked off.
• Game types were coverall, pattern or 1-2-Slingo (prizes for 1 Slingo, 2 Slingos and coverall, split as in 90 ball bingo).
• When a prize was won, the name of the player popped up in the same way it would in a bingo game – unless you were the winner, in which case the message was BOOM! (hence the name)
• As in single player versions of Slingo the reels spun from left to right and the numbers were not normally shown being marked off until the spin was complete (after all the reels had stopped). Nevertheless, a check was made after each individual reel stopped (rather than after the spin as a whole) to see whether someone had won and if they had, the game paused mid-spin to award the prize, only resuming to show the rest of the spin if the win was on a Slingo rather than on the coverall.
• This means that if two players completed a Slingo on the same spin, they only split the prize if both completed from the same reel; if they completed from different reels the player who completed from the reel further to the left won.
• One fundamental difference between Slingo Boom and regular 75 ball bingo was that numbers were NOT removed from the reels after being called, so the same number could come up multiple times in one game.  This meant that although a game of Slingo Boom played quite a bit more quickly than a game of 75 ball bingo, it wasn’t the 5 times faster one might expect.
• When Slingo Boom was originally released there were no extra spins, but this functionality was added in a later version in Spring 2017.  Players who were close to completing the board might be offered the opportunity to buy (often quite expensive) extra spins to try and finish; if they succeeded they won the full house prize amount. Essentially this added a slot machine feature game to the bingo game (it worked like a slot, because the player was competing against the house and not other players)

Was it any good?

So was it any good? Well, it depends what you want from a bingo game.  It was certainly a bit different from regular 75 ball bingo and had quite a lot more going on visually.  With only one board per player, it was fair for everyone.  It also had chat.

On the minus side, with only Slingo Boom on offer there wasn’t as much variety as at a regular bingo site.  The real problem, though, was that it simply didn’t catch on and there were never enough players in the rooms for the prizes to be worthwhile.