Entertainment · Event booking app
BingoBuddy: a nationwide bingo event booking app
BingoBuddy lets players find and book bingo sessions at venues across the country in one place. We built the platform in 6 weeks. In its first year it listed 340 venues, sold 47,000 tickets and lifted attendance on listed sessions by 26% compared with the same venue's prior year.
- Client
- Bingo Buddy
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Built
- Web app
- Timeframe
- 6 weeks
What changed
- 340 venueslisted nationwide within the first year
- 47,000 ticketssold through the platform
- 26% attendance lifton listed sessions, measured against the same venue's prior year
- 62% new playersof bookings came from players who had never been to that venue
- About 20 secondsto find a session, replacing word of mouth and a laminated sheet at the door
- 6 weeksfrom kickoff to a finished build
Results as reported for this build after launch.
The challenge
Bingo players found out about games through local ads and scattered listings. That made new sessions hard to find and kept attendance lower than it could be.
Halls promoted themselves in local papers and on small Facebook pages. Operators worried their crowd was getting older, while younger players had no way to find a game online even if they wanted one.
The founder's mother played bingo three nights a week. She learned about sessions from a printed sheet pinned up in the hall she already went to. Finding a game anywhere else meant driving over and asking.
General event platforms did not fit. They are designed for one-off events backed by marketing spend, not for a weekly Tuesday session at a hall that has run for thirty years without a website.
The job was to make a long tail of small venues visible online, without asking operators to build anything themselves.
What we built
We built a national booking platform that brings bingo sessions from every listed venue into one search, with ticketing for halls that want it and listing only for halls that do not.
An operator portal lets venues manage sessions, capacity and pricing with no website of their own.
Search by location and date
Players search every listed venue by place and date. This did not exist before and delivers most of the value.
Session and venue details
Each session shows admission price, book prices, prize structure, start time and session type. Venue profiles add parking, accessibility, food and whether the hall is cash only.
QR ticketing or pay at the door
Tickets use QR entry. Venues that prefer to take payment at the door can list without selling tickets, which brought many smaller operators on board.
Follows, alerts and group booking
Players follow a venue and get an alert when it adds sessions. Group booking handles a coach party in one transaction.
First-timer guides
Every venue page has a short guide for newcomers, because not knowing how a session works is the biggest barrier for a new player.
Operator portal
Venues handle scheduling, capacity and pricing in the portal, without needing a website.
Screens and design system
The result
The 26% attendance lift turned a consumer app into a business. It gave operators a reason to list and to keep their sessions current, and venues that never had a web presence now maintain one themselves.
The bigger surprise was who showed up. A meaningful share of new bookings come from players in their twenties and thirties who had never been able to see the category. Social clubs and quiz nights have since been added as session types.
