Affordable drinks and a tangible sense of community are attracting a new young crowd to bingo halls across the country, with thousands of first-time players under the age of 28 flocking to their local club to get in on the action.

On TikTok bingo videos are thriving: @bingowithbri, for instance, has more than five million likes on her videosGen Z are “going mad for bingo” according to The Times, which has published a special report on how the evergreen game is attracting a new following among those aged 28 and under.

Bingo halls are now “the hot new hangout for twenty-somethings” thanks to a combination of in-person socialising and cheap drinks, boosting hopes for a full revival of the sector post-Covid.

“Right now bingo halls are having a revival, and not just for your grandma and her friends,” reported The Times. “On TikTok bingo videos are thriving: @bingowithbri, for instance, has more than five million likes on her videos.”

“Meanwhile, Rank Group, which runs 52 bingo venues across the UK, reported that 44 percent of its new customers last year were under the age of 35.”

According to Chloe Combi, author of Generation Z: Their Voices, Their Lives, the attraction is part of the generation’s “ironic reverence of the past.”

As bingo was for a long time “the antithesis of cool,” Combi believes the pastime has now reached a point where “it has gone full circle and become cool again… underpinning it is an attempt to reclaim our lives IRL, as it were.”

For Liv Williams, whose local club is Club 3000 Manchester, bingo provides “the sort of community I’ve not found elsewhere.”

“It’s a really sociable place and everyone chats to each other,” the 28-year old told The Times. “No matter what age you end up in a conversation.”

Mecca Bingo Acocks Green regular Izzy Evans agreed, added “the social experience lured us in and the cheap drinks kept us there.”