Remember the craic at the Barney Mac’s online Bingo during lockdown? Well, it’s returning but this time it is being run through a specially developed app which sports clubs and charities throughout Ireland can use to raise funds by running their own bingo nights.
Back in the dark days of the pandemic lockdowns, local publican Brian Mc Donnell came up with the brainwave of running weekly online Bingo sessions via Facebook Live from Barney Mac’s pub on the Chord Road.
The idea worked a treat and caught on very quickly, it brightened the lives of many hundreds of locals who looked forward to their Monday Night session of Bingo patter from Brian.
The whole town was talking about it and local companies were almost queueing up to sponsor prizes such as meat vouchers, window cleaning services and others. Cadbury’s even chipped in with boxes of free chocolates.
The Bingo was as close to a social life that we had when nothing else was happening and, over the 13 games that it ran, Barney Mac’s lockdown Bingo also raised just under €20,000 for local charities.
For everyone playing it was great craic altogether but behind the scenes it proved to be a lot of work for Brian and his family.
Youngest daughter Fiona was kept particularly busy. She had to set up an online platform for each week’s recipient charity and Bingo books had to be emailed to those players that had a printer to print them but for those that didn’t she had to photocopy them and deliver them door to door.
She had to keep a photocopy of each book so she could check them on the night when she’d be talking from her home to Brian as he was doing his banter online.
Things were further complicated by the fact that Facebook Live has a delay of up to 12 seconds depending on the speed of each player’s connection.
So, when someone called “check” Fiona had very little time to check the players numbers against those that had been called…. Long story short, it was very labour intensive and could not have lasted for ever.
However, Brian’s son Ben, who not only pulls pints behind the bar but also works as a software developer, felt that there had to be a way to automate the whole online Bingo process.
He could see the popularity of online Bingo and how it could be applied to help charities and sports clubs to raise funds and he has been burning the midnight oil for the past two years working to develop an app that will do just that.
There were obstacles to overcome at every stage of the development before the app could be launched and not all of them were technical.
They had to apply for a lottery licence and look after other legal issues, Ben did a crash course in graphic design and, perhaps the most difficult issue, was finding a payment processing company that could see beyond the “online gambling” tag and understand the community benefits of the project.
Early this year though, someone in Shopify (an online payment platform) finally saw the merit in the project and signed it up.
Now, after two difficult and sometimes frustrating years of work. the app, it’s called “The Bingo App” is up and running and ready for individuals to start playing and charity organisations to start making funds from it.
Ben explained that players must first download the app and then buy cards costing €2.50 for each game and that there would be four games in each session.
The size of the cash prize depends on the number of people playing and the system can handle up to 3,000 people playing simultaneously and they can be anywhere in the country.
Fifty percent of the proceeds of each game will go in prizes and the rest of the money, all bar a small amount in handling fees, will go to the charity.
The Barney Macs charities are Cystic Fibrosis, Drogheda Women’s Refuge, Drogheda Branch of the Wheelchair Association and the Boomerang Café.
Other games being run by sports organisations or charities themselves will adopt similar rules, but the bulk of the charity fund will be kept by themselves.
For more information and to download the app (in either Android or iOS) see The Bingo app Facebook page.
Ben is currently looking for local GAA and other clubs and charities who would like to sign up to the scheme to contact him either by email at ben.mcdonnell@thebingoapp.com or by phone on 087 7742 481.
“Hopefully this app will prove to be a headache removed for clubs and organisations seeking to raise funds” Ben said. “People and organisations anywhere in the Republic can play”.
“I can show anyone interested in running bingo games with the app how easy it is to use. Basically, when all the players are signed in and their details registered, the system runs itself” he said.
