Virtue Fusion Christmas Escalators

Every year for the last few years, Virtue Fusion bingo sites have run an escalator jackpot promotion at Christmas (and sometimes at other times of the year as well).  This year’s promotion runs every evening from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day.

What Is An Escalator Jackpot?

It’s common for bingo rooms to have a progressive jackpot.  A small percentage of ticket sales go to fund the jackpot (and its reseed value) and it continues to grow until someone wins it.  The jackpot drops when someone wins full house in a specified number of calls or fewer, but the specified number of calls is normally set quite low, making it very unlikely that the jackpot will drop in the normal course of play.  For example, if the jackpot is set to drop when full house is called in 34 or fewer calls in a 90 ball game, the chance that any given bingo ticket has of completing full house in 34 calls is tiny (1 in 24.6 million, to be precise).  Even if there are a lot of tickets in play to bump up the chance of at least one of them completing it, the chances of the jackpot dropping remain extremely low.

Running an escalator jackpot promotion turns one of these almost-never-drop jackpots into a must-drop jackpot.  During the promo period, the specified number of calls for the jackpot to drop in is increased at preset intervals (one step at a time, which is why it’s called an escalator) and this continues until the jackpot drops, at which point the jackpot is reset to its regular seed value and the promotion ends.

Virtue Fusion 2022 Christmas Escalators – How They Work

Virtue Fusion have massive experience in running escalator jackpots and they really know how to make them exciting for players!

• The tried and tested procedure is to start the promotion at 6pm and increase the ball count by 2 calls every hour, on the hour.  If the jackpot hasn’t dropped by quarter to midnight, the ball count goes to 90 (or 75, if the promotion is in a 75 ball room) ensuring that it drops in the next game.
• Virtue Fusion escalator jackpots are split 50/50 between the full house winner (or winners) of the game they drop in, and all other tickets purchased for that game.
• The jackpots are usually (but not always) started at a value that is considerably higher than the seed value of the usual progressive jackpot.

In previous versions of the promotion, it’s run in different rooms on different days, but this year the action is all in one room, Deal Or No Deal 90.  The normal ball count for the jackpot to drop is 34 calls (as discussed above) and starting at 6pm, it goes up by 2 every hour.  As the evening goes on, the jackpot gets more likely to drop and this attracts more and more players hoping to get a share, which in turn makes the jackpot more likely to drop by increasing the number of tickets in play. And you know what that means?  Bigger regular prizes in every game as the liquidity goes up – which also attracts more players!

It gets REALLY exciting if the jackpot hasn’t dropped by 11pm.  At that point, the ball count reaches 46.  That’s more than half of the 90 balls, so the chances of the jackpot dropping must be better than evens, right?  Not necessarily! The chance any given ticket has of completing full house in 46 calls is still very small (1 in 89,490) BUT by this time the bingo room will be absolutely buzzing with hundreds or even thousands of players, so it all comes down to how many tickets they bought.  At Virtue Fusion, players can buy tickets up to a week in advance, and lots of players probably will!

In any case, if you’re in Deal Or No Deal Bingo 90 at 11pm on any of the evenings that the promotion is running and the jackpot is yet to drop, strap in for one of the most exciting hours of bingo you’ll ever play – and if the jackpot hasn’t dropped by 23:45 expect the room to go absolutely crazy as everyone rushes to max out on tickets for the final game!

Virtue Fusion 2022 Christmas Escalators – Jackpot Size

In this year’s promotion, the jackpot sizes are very clearly defined.  In the past, the jackpots have sometimes exceeded advertised values because the progressive jackpot hadn’t dropped for a long time and had got huge, but Virtue Fusion didn’t want to advertise the inflated value just in case the jackpot dropped before the promotion started.  That won’t happen this time because the DOND90 progressive jackpot has recently dropped and was only a little above its normal seed value of £5000 a few days before the start of the promotion.

So this time, what you see is what you get – but will do very nicely, thank you.  In a nice twist, there’s an escalator element to the entire promotion as well as to each evening’s action – the jackpot size goes up by £5000 every evening as the week progresses. So on Christmas Day there’s £20,000 to be won (£10,000 for the full house winner or winners and £10,000 split between all tickets in the game where it drops) whereas on New Year’s Day, the final day of the promotion, there’s a massive £55,000 up for grabs (£27,500 for the full house winner or winners and £27,500 split between all the tickets in the winning game).

Where To Play

There are two versions of Deal Or No Deal Bingo 90 – you want the Virtue Fusion version, not the Entain version! Just to make it really confusing, Entain are also running an escalator jackpot promotion (from 23rd December until 2nd January) and their version of DOND 90 is also involved, but alternating with the Coronation Street Bingo room.  The Entain jackpots are a mere £15,000 per evening and just like the Virtue Fusion jackpots they are split 50/50 between the winner and the community (truly, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery).  There is one small but significant difference – the end time is 23:48 at Entain and 23:45 at Virtue Fusion, so bear this in mind when working out which game the jackpot would be guaranteed to drop in if it hadn’t done so earlier.