X Factor Bingo is a 90-ball room at Mecca with one extra card on the table. Alongside your own tickets sits the judges’ desk, and hidden behind it is a special ticket. Whoever wins the full house gets a bonus depending on what their winning number does to that card, from an extra £5 up to £500.
Tickets start at 5p. We sat in the room to see how the judges’ card plays out.
How X Factor Bingo Works
The main game is standard 90-ball bingo. Prizes are for one line, two lines and a full house, with as many tickets as you like. The room was selling at 5p when we visited, and the game we watched paid £3 for one line, £5 for two lines and £7 for the house.
What sets it apart is the Judges Jackpot panel in the corner of the room. It shows its own 15-number bingo ticket, laid out in three rows of five like a normal 90-ball ticket, and it gets marked as the numbers are called, just like yours.
The Judges Jackpot
The judges’ card isn’t one of your tickets. It only matters when someone calls the full house. Whatever number completes that full house is checked against the judges’ card, and the winner picks up an extra prize if it lands there:
Payouts
| Judges’ card result on your full house number | Extra prize |
|---|---|
| The number is anywhere on the judges’ card | £5 |
| It completes a line on the judges’ card | £50 |
| It completes two lines on the judges’ card | £100 |
| It completes the whole judges’ card | £500 |
So the Judges Jackpot rewards timing. The later in a game the full house falls, the more of the judges’ card will already be marked and the better the chance that the winning number tips it over into a line or more. In the game we watched, 44 numbers had gone, and the room’s jackpot display was showing the £50 one-line prize.
Mecca lists these four amounts as fixed, though its game page adds that prizes can change with promotions or scheduled activity.
Guaranteed Games
X Factor Bingo has two regular slots where Mecca guarantees the prize in every game, rather than letting it rise and fall with ticket sales:
- Sundays from 1pm to 3pm: £40 guaranteed in every game.
- Every day from 9pm to 11pm: £50 or £100 guaranteed in every game.
Those are worth knowing about because the normal 5p games pay small amounts. A £7 full house doesn’t go far, so the guaranteed hours are when the room offers the best value.
Where to Play X Factor Bingo
The only site we found running X Factor Bingo is Mecca, where it’s listed as “X Factor Bingo: TV special”. It’s open every day from 10am.
Mecca has a whole set of branded rooms, including Deal or No Deal Bingo, and the rest are rounded up on our bingo room games page.