How to Play Telly Bingo

Purchase a Telly Bingo ticket

Telly Bingo tickets cost €2.50 each and are available from any lottery retailer in Ireland. Ticket sales close at 11:00am on draw days and you can play up to six games in advance.

You will receive a five-by-five grid containing 24 randomly generated numbers between 1 and 75, with the centre square already marked off. You cannot choose your own numbers in Telly Bingo.

Tune into the Telly Bingo broadcast

Once you have your ticket it’s time to play along with the Telly Bingo TV show. It’s broadcast on RTÉ One at 12.45pm on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and is then available on YouTube and RTÉ Player.

If you enter multiple draws in advance make sure you fill in the correct ticket. Each ticket you get is valid for one Telly Bingo draw only – the correct draw date will be stated on the ticket.

Mark your numbers off as they appear

A series of balls numbered between 1 and 75 will be drawn. Mark the corresponding numbers on your ticket as they appear – the centre square is a ‘free number’ that is already considered matched.

Numbers will continue to be drawn until one player matches all the numbers on their ticket, making a Full House. The Telly Bingo host will announce when this happens and the game will end.

Check whether you’ve won a prize

There are several different ways to win in Telly Bingo – you don’t have to make a Full House. If you’ve marked all four corners, for example, you win something.

Make sure to check your ticket carefully after the game and use the ‘How to Win’ guide below to find out if you’ve matched enough numbers to land a prize.

How to Win

There are six possible prizes to be won in any round of Telly Bingo and it is possible to claim multiple prizes on the same ticket.

• Corners - The first phase of the game sees 32 numbers drawn. If the numbers in all four corners of your grid are selected in this time, you win a prize worth a minimum of €5. The average award is €10.
• X Cross - Four more numbers are selected, taking the total to 36. If you have marked an X through the centre of your grid, you win a prize of around €100. The cross shape requires that eight numbers are matched correctly.
• Full House - Numbers continue to be drawn until at least one player has matched all of the numbers on their card. At this point, the Telly Bingo game ends and no more prizes are awarded. The Full House prize is fixed at €10,000 and is shared if others complete their cards on the same number.
• Snowball - If you complete a Full House on or before the 45th number, you win a minimum of €10,000 on top of the €10,000 Full House prize.
  The Snowball prize works like a progressive jackpot in traditional bingo. If no players achieve a Snowball, a further €5,000 is added to the prize pool for the following game and the Snowball number increases by one (the bonus is available for getting a Full House within 46 numbers). This continues until a winner is found, potentially leading to some huge payouts.
• Lucky Line - One of the five horizontal lines is selected at random during the gameshow. Mark all the numbers on that line and you win €5. Line 1 is the top line on your ticket, Line 2 is the line below the top one, and so on.
• Phone Risk Card - A unique six-digit card number is printed directly underneath your 24-number grid. One card number is selected at random during the show. If yours is the one to be selected you have to contact lottery officials by 9:00pm the following day for your ticket to be validated. You will then have the chance to compete on the show over the phone for a prize of between €1,000 and €10,000.

Claiming Telly Bingo Prizes

Each ticket sold for a Telly Bingo draw is automatically entered into the central computer system at the moment when it is generated for purchase. This allows officials to keep track of when someone has won the Full House prize without players having to alert them like they would during a traditional bingo game at a club. The game is then stopped and prizes can be calculated.

Even if you miss the draw, you can find the Telly Bingo Results later to see if you are a winner. You can also take your ticket to a retailer to check.

As the game is only available in-store, you will have to claim your prize from a retailer, claim centre or the National Lottery headquarters. You can also claim prizes by post. Go to the Claiming Prizes page for more information about what to do, depending on the value of your win.