Bingo Progressive Jackpots – The Ultimate Guide
In this guide, we explain how bingo progressive jackpots work. These are commonly displayed at the top of the screen in online bingo rooms, along with the full house, two-line, and one-line prize amounts.
To find out how progressive jackpots are funded, how to qualify, who gets to receive the prize money (surprisingly, not always the winner!) and some of the best places to go jackpot hunting, read on!
How are progressive bingo jackpots funded?
The idea of progressive bingo jackpots is that they are allowed to grow bigger and bigger, so that they become increasingly enticing to players.
Some of the money in a progressive bingo jackpot might come from the bingo operators, as a growing jackpot leads to increased ticket sales for them as players hurry to take part and buy them.
However, if a bingo operator wants to stay in business then they cannot fund their bingo progressive jackpots without help from other revenue sources. That’s where qualifying games come in: operators take a percentage of the ticket sales for qualifying games and add it to the progressive jackpot totals.
So, you might notice that at the start of a particular day a jackpot could be worth £50, but by the end of the day its value has increased to £75.
There are some progressive bingo jackpots that operate slightly differently. They start at a specific amount when the game begins, and the prize money grows as more numbers are announced.
You should be able to see the current value of the jackpots (and even watch them increasing!) via the room thumbnails in the games lobby and on information screens within the rooms themselves.
Where can I find bingo progressive jackpots?
There are multiple websites dedicated to tracking progressive slot jackpots (such as Microgaming’s Mega Moolah). These sites show you the average payout amount, the average time between wins, and the date and location of the last win. It’s a lot harder to keep tabs on bingo progressive jackpots as there are so many of them!
In this section, we take a look at some of the major online bingo networks in the UK that offer progressive jackpots. If you’d like to find out more about these networks or their member sites, visit our bingo networks page.
888’s Dragonfish bingo network is where you’ll find well-known brands like 888Ladies and Wink Bingo.
Wink Bingo offers progressive jackpots on several bingo games. Here are some of the juicy details:
- 90-Ball Progressive – Seeds at £100 / Call house in under 37 calls to win
- 75-Ball Moneyball Progressive – Seeds at £250 / Call house in under 34 calls to win
- Swedish 5-Line – Seeds at £50 / Call house in under 48 calls to win
- Top of the Shop – Seeds at £1,000 / Call house in under 32 calls to win
Mecca Bingo and Sun Bingo are two of the most famous names in the bingo industry. They both use Playtech’s Virtue Fusion bingo platform to bring you a thrilling collection of games, including Rainbow Riches Bingo and Deal or No Deal 90.
Here are the biggest bingo progressive jackpots that are up for grabs at the site:
- Jackpot 75 – Seeds at £3,000 / Call house within 43 calls to win
- Jackpot 90 – Seeds at £5,000 / Call house within 34 calls to win
- Megapot – Seeds at £5,000 / Call house with 33 calls to win
At all Playtech sites most rooms features some kind of progressive jackpot so there is always that air of added excitement in case it pops.
Jackpotjoy is the flagship brand of the Gamesys Group and it offers many bingo progressive jackpots.
Jackpotjoy also features Gamesys’ exclusive Powerbolts – the Maxi Bolt (a jackpot that’s shared between all Gamesys bingo brands that must be won by 10pm each day) and the Mini Bolt (which can be won several times a day but only by members of the site).
Here are some examples of Jackpotjoy’s progressive bingo jackpots, as well as the winning conditions that must be met by players to claim them:
- Round the Clock – Seed value £100 / Call house within 21 calls to win
- Cloud – Seed value £100 / Call house within 43 calls to win
- The Crystal Maze – Seed value £1,000 / Call house within 38 calls to win
Blox – Seed value unknown / Call house within 38 calls to win
Standalone sites
The UK is responsible for creating an exciting and often eclectic mix of proprietary bingo sites that are not part of a wider network, and these include MrQ, mFortune, and Tombola.
Tombola has made itself a household name and below are examples of the kind of progressive bingo jackpots you can expect to find there. And, of course, there’s the advantage that you’ll only be competing against other members of the site rather than multiple sites across the same network.
- Bingo90 – Seed value £500 / Call house in 40 calls or less to win
- BingoLite – Seed value £100 / Call house in 43 calls or less to win
What are the different types of progressive jackpot?
Remember: not all bingo progressive jackpots are created equal.
In this section of our Ultimate Guide to Bingo Progressive Jackpots, we look at the three main types of progressive jackpot and how they affect online bingo players.
Standalone jackpots
Typically worth a few hundred pounds, standalone jackpots are usually among the smaller progressive jackpots, as they are only funded by ticket sales for a particular game at a single site.
Local jackpots
Local bingo progressive jackpots are tied to several linked games or rooms that are connected at a particular site. As they pool their jackpots, they rise in sync based on the number of tickets sold across all the qualifying games and/or bingo rooms. This makes them harder to win than standalone pots, but on the plus side they tend to be worth more.
Wide-area/networked jackpots
Wide-area jackpots are the biggest pots that you can play for. They are offered by linked games across multiple sites that share the same bingo network, and as they are contributed to by far more players than standalone and local jackpots, wide-area networked pots can offer thousands (and occasionally tens of thousands) of pounds!
How are jackpots awarded?
So, now that you know how the various types of jackpots work, you’re probably itching to find out how you can win them!
There is no one rule on how to win a progressive bingo jackpot, but in general you need to call a full house or complete a pattern within a fixed number of calls.
With games that use fewer balls than others (e.g. 75-ball games in comparison to 90-ball games), the required ball count is usually lower too.
For example, to win a 90-ball jackpot, you might need to call the full house in 40 calls or less, whereas the criteria for winning a 75-ball jackpot could be 33 calls or less.
The ball count varies from site-to-site and game-to-game, so be sure to check the winning criteria before playing.
When a jackpot is won it resets, or ‘seeds’, to a fixed amount, after which it slowly starts to build up again.
Another important thing to bear in mind is that the winner doesn’t necessarily get to take home the full jackpot amount. This is certainly the case with community jackpots where the winner gets to keep a percentage of the prize money and the rest is shared out between the all other participating players, usually based on how many tickets were held in the winning game.
Other types of progressive jackpots
When you play at online bingo sites (as well as online casinos and slot sites), you may encounter other types of progressive jackpots.
They are a common feature of online slots, and we’re sure that you’ve heard of (or played) some of the best-known progressive jackpot slots such as Mega Fortune, Mega Moolah, Jackpot Giant, and Jackpot King.
The amounts that can be won on some progressive jackpot slots are jaw-dropping. Mega Moolah, for example, awards an average of £6.9m every time its Mega Jackpot pays out, and it’s won roughly every 33 days.
Just like their bingo counterparts, progressive slot jackpots can be standalone (i.e. unique to one game at one site), local (shared between multiple games at one site) or networked (shared between one or more games across multiple sites belonging to the same network).
Progressive jackpots are sometimes offered by other casino games such as Caribbean Stud Poker and Evolution Gaming’s Live Texas Hold’em Bonus Poker, ensuring you have plenty of options available to you if you’re in the hunt for big prizes!
