How To Play
Deal or No Deal Bingo is based round a traditional 90-ball or 75-ball bingo game, but 21 of the bingo balls appear on an array of red Deal or No Deal Boxes (at Entain, it’s gold briefcases). The 22nd box is for the players, and just as in the TV show there is a mystery amount inside the box. As the numbers are called, the corresponding boxes are opened and the amounts are revealed. When someone wins with a full house, the banker will make them an offer for their box. They must decide…..deal or no deal? They don’t have to make the all-important decision alone though, because to add to the fun all the other players in the bingo room can vote to help the winner make up their mind.
Deal Or No Deal Bingo is indisputably the best known and most popular bingo variant game on the UK market and players still love it even after all these years.
Progressive Jackpots
Both Virtue Fusion versions of the game have progressive jackpots which can get very large. To win the progressive jackpot in Deal Or No Deal Bingo 90, the winning player must bingo in 31 calls or fewer and to win it in Deal Or No Deal Bingo 75 they must bingo in 42 calls or fewer. They win 50% of the jackpot and the remainder is split between the other players depending on the number of tickets they bought. In both rooms the chance of the jackpot dropping under normal circumstances is very small but Virtue Fusion periodically run escalator jackpot promotions (typically once or twice a year) which include one or both of the rooms. During the course of the promotion, the number of calls within which bingo must be called for the jackpot to drop gradually increases until it is won.
The Entain versions of the game don’t normally have progressive jackpots; although the Entain DOND 90 room ran a series of £25,000 escalators shortly after launch, the jackpot was only added for the duration of the promotion.
The tombola version of the game has a jackpot that drops if full house is won in 42 calls or fewer.
Where to Play
Although there was an official Deal or No Deal bingo site it was by no means the best place to play and the official Deal Or No Deal Casino didn’t have any bingo at all, never mind Deal Or No Deal Bingo. Both these sites have now closed. The incredibly popular 75 and 90 ball Deal Or No Deal bingo rooms are available right across the Virtue Fusion network and often have enhanced prize money sessions and escalator jackpots. While still on the Virtue Fusion platform, Gala Bingo also used to have Big Banker Bingo which was a very similar but unbranded version of the 90 ball game, but it never achieved the level of popularity of the original and the prizes were disappointingly small.
Paddy Power Bingo has another Deal Or No Deal bingo game, Deal Or No Deal Multiplier, in addition to DOND 90 and DOND 75. In DOND Multiplier Bingo, the mystery box concept appears at the start rather than the end of the game; your box is opened just before the game starts to reveal a multiplier of 1x to 5x which is applied to any prize you win.
In July 2021 a version of Deal Or No Deal Bingo was introduced at Entain bingo sites. It comes in both 75 and 90 ball versions and was launched to coincide with the migration of Gala Bingo to the Entain platform. It looks a bit different to the Virtue Fusion version (apparently this is because the branding comes from the American version) but plays pretty much the same, complete with the voting at the end. At launch it lacked the progessive jackpots of the Virtue Fusion version and had far smaller prizes. Whether it will attract players in large enough numbers to offer the big prizes of the Virtue Fusion games remains to be seen.
In December 2022, Pragmatic Play bingo sites debuted their own version of this classic bingo game. It’s called Diamond Dazzle and replicates the gameplay faithfully but with pink diamonds instead of red boxes and no DOND branding.
In early 2024, a 90 ball version of Deal Or No Deal Bingo was launched at tombola along with three other Deal Or No Deal games, as part of their recently inked sponsorship deal with Endemol. The tombola version differs from all of the other versions in that the contents of the briefcase or Banker’s Offer go to a randomly selected player rather than to the full house winner; they also win whatever they voted for (it defaults to No Deal if they don’t vote in time) rather than whatever the majority voted for.
Also in 2024, a Jumpman Gaming site called Deal Or No Deal launched; although it features several Deal Or No Deal themed games, bingo is not amongst them (it does have Diamond Dazzle though).
