Making Money from Bingo!

Bingo is much more profitable than you think it is.

I met a guy that grosses $80k per DAY with bingo, 21 days a year.

And then he hosts over 2,000 smaller bingo games per year as well...

*Super Bingo enters the chat* What's Super Bingo?

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It's a $160 entry fee that buys you:

1 bingo card
2 daubers (for marking your bingo card)
Free drinks
2 free lunches
$10 slots credit

And for another $140 you can stay for 4 nights at the Plaza.

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Here's the genius of it:

Super Bingo falls on weekdays, to bring traffic in the door during slow periods. 1,000 super bingo seats for the ~1,000 room hotel.

They host it in the massive conference hall, not in the normal bingo room.

So if Super Bingo moves the needle that much, why only once per year?

The CEO @JonathanJossel wanted to change that when he came onboard.

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But let's back up a bit first.

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I learned this stuff from the godfather of Vegas bingo last month, Weldon Russell, as well as the Plaza CEO, Jonathan Jossell

When Weldon and Jonathan joined the plaza they were doing daily bingo, plus super bingo only once per year.

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Jonathan was triggered after he had a convo with a lady that went like this,

"Please don't change anything with bingo, it helped me buy a pool."

"Oh, because you won the grand prize!?"

"No, because I'm able to win every single day."

Hmmm...Jonathan thought. That math isn't mathing. Like everything in Vegas, Bingo is simply math, after all.

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Long story short, bingo at the Plaza was broken and people were exploiting a loophole.

Jonathan closed the loophole, pissed off some loyal customers, hired the best bingo manager in the world, and dug in.

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Super bingo was their flagship bingo night, and it was wildly profitable...but they only had it once per year.

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Jonathan asked "what if we do this twice per year?"

"No no no, there's not enough demand," they told him.

They did it anyway, and it sold out. Then he asked,

"Why not 7x per year?"

"Nononono that's crazy! We'd never sell the tickets!"

But they did it anyway, and they sold out. That was 8 years ago, and they now do it 7x per year, after ramping up over time.

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They now have a sales team that helps to push tickets. (this was abnormal for the industry).

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So how much profit does super bingo make?

Between $230k - $300k top line over 3 days, depending on headcount and average spend.

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Net profits are 25-30+% of that...

They've gotta pay our $160k in cash prizes, after all. Not bad for 7x per year...

Oh, and then they have "normal bingo" 6 times PER DAY, which draws  40 - 200 people per session!

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For someone that doesn't drink or gamble, I find Vegas economics insanely fascinating.

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The Plaza turnaround story needs to be a Harvard case study. Jonathan has done an amazing job. There's a dozen more stories I plan to tell about this turnaround in the future.

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Update: I just learned how this bingo exploit worked.

Throughout the game the prize pool continues to grow, especially if the event isn’t sold out.

Players would keep buying up allllll the bingo sheets as the prize pool grew.

With enough sheets it became a statistical inevitability that you’d win and come out ahead.

When @JonathanJossel was hired and learned of this he quickly put a cap on the number of sheets you can buy.

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Also, I neglected to mention that the vast majority of profits came from players spending $300-400/day on more sheets. $160 simply gets you in the door.

So bingo is actually a bit more profitable than described below.

Also, super bingo is 10x per year and not 7.

7 figures per year in net profit in one hotel from one game. Mind boggling!

What happens in Vegas ends up on my feed.

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Would love a follow @mhp_guy if you found this interesting.