Bongo's Bingo XL
Bongo’s Bingo was created as a random idea between two friends in Liverpool seven years ago and has now grown into a global phenomenon.
Combining the quaint pastime of traditional bingo with an immersive and interactive live show, amazing music and wonderful prizes, Bongo’s has expanded from a quiz in a local pub to sell-out events entertaining thousands of people across world. It is now the hottest night on the social diary with shows taking place across the UK from Glasgow to Southampton and international dates including Dubai and Sydney.
In Liverpool, it takes place twice a week in Content, a purpose-built venue in the city’s Baltic Triangle, for up to 2,700 visitors per week. However, organisers wanted to create an even bigger event – the largest to date - and looked no further than one of the city’s biggest event venues across the road on the waterfront – Exhibition Centre Liverpool.
All three halls in the 8,100 sqm exhibition centre were transformed into a party wonderland for the 90s Forever themed event – with disco balls, full stage production, impressive lighting rigs and hundreds of trestle tables running almost the full length of the venue.
Organiser Jonny Bongo said: “As we’ve steadily grown our event since 2015, we wanted to create something even bigger and on a huge scale – the likes of which we’ve never tried before. Exhibition Centre Liverpool was the perfect venue to enable us to do this.
“As it’s basically a blank canvas, we were able to transform it into the ultimate party venue for our 6,500 bingo enthusiasts. As well as our games of bingo – which are unlike anything anyone has experienced before – we had live bands performing – the Venga Boys and Atomic Kitten.
“The production looked incredible with classic 90s tunes and lots of dancing – it was a fantastic night. Thanks to the Exhibition Centre Liverpool team for helping to make our wild ideas turn into a reality and for helping us to make sure everyone had the time of their lives.”
The two-night event hosted 3,000 revellers on the first night and completely sold out 3,500 on the second.
Kay Wilson, The ACC Liverpool Group’s head of sales – concerts, entertainment and sports, said: “We’ve been in talks with the Bongo’s Bingo team for some time and shared their excitement of hosting this spectacular immersive live show on a huge scale.
“Exhibition Centre Liverpool is the perfect entertainment venue and can be transformed into the most amazing space – all it takes is creativity which both our teams have in spades. It was two nights of non-stop fun and we were so pleased to be part of it.
“It combined bingo, live stage entertainments, dancing and music artists – it was the perfect way to showcase the versatility of our venue.
“We hope to work with Jonny and his team again in the future to deliver even bigger events.”