Guide
Prize ideas for an office bingo game
The right prize for office bingo is not the most valuable one. It is the one that makes the winner laugh and does not annoy everybody else.
Three rules before the list
- Keep the value low and even. An expensive prize turns a game into a company raffle, and everyone who does not win stops enjoying it. Under ten euros or pounds a prize, nobody does the arithmetic.
- Nothing that embarrasses. Nothing touching anyone's appearance, private life, performance or eating habits. If a prize only works because it teases one specific person, it does not work.
- The best prizes are not objects. Time, choice and small privileges beat a gadget that ends up in a drawer — and leave nothing to throw away.
Prizes that cost nothing
- An hour off, to be used whenever the winner likes that week.
- Leaving early on Friday, half an hour before the rest.
- Picking the music in the office for a day, or owning the shared playlist.
- Skipping a turn on an unloved rota: meeting notes, the status update, tidying the kitchen.
- Choosing the venue for the next team lunch.
- An honorary title for a week, email signature included — only if the winner is up for it.
- First pick of a shift or of the remaining holiday dates.
Small things worth buying
- A good bar of chocolate, not the vending machine one.
- A coffee voucher for the place downstairs.
- A small plant for a desk.
- Absurd socks. They always win.
- A deck of cards, a metal puzzle, a Rubik's cube.
- A plain mug — not a "funny mug", which nobody ever uses.
- A ten-euro bookshop voucher, the hardest gift in the world to get wrong.
If the team is distributed
With half the group at home, physical prizes become a logistics problem: either you post them or you create two classes of winner. Three alternatives genuinely work remotely: digital vouchers (coffee, books, food delivery) sent by email; time prizes such as the hour off or the early finish, which are worth the same wherever you are; and choice prizes, such as picking the topic of the next informal session or Friday demo.
How to spread them across five tiers
Classic tombola has five prizes in ascending order, and it is worth respecting the ladder, or the first winner ends up better rewarded than the last:
- Two in a row: a token prize, almost a joke. A chocolate, a sticker, the right to pick the next song.
- Three: something small but real — a coffee, a pastry.
- Four: half an hour off, or skipping a turn on the rota.
- Full row: the middle prize — a ten-euro voucher, an early finish.
- Full card: the serious one. Lunch on the company, half a day off, choosing where the next offsite happens.
If you are playing 75-ball bingo there are only two tiers, line and bingo: put something small on the first and spend the budget on the second.
One idea that beats the rest: a group prize
Instead of five individual prizes, put up a single thing that everybody gets — breakfast for the team on Monday, an afternoon working somewhere else — and let whoever wins the full card decide when it happens. It moves the attention from the prize to the decision, it works well in groups where somebody always feels unlucky, and you pay for it once.
What to avoid
- Cash. It changes the tone in five seconds, and in many companies creates a paperwork problem.
- Work-shaped prizes ("a day with the boss to review your goals"): tasks in a costume, and everyone can tell.
- Undeclared surprise prizes. Say what is up for grabs beforehand: half the fun is knowing what you are playing for.
- Prizes that require a subscription. A membership the winner will never use is a gift that weighs something.
Once the prizes are settled, the rest is mechanical: create the game and send the link, or stretch it over weeks with one number a day, which is also the easiest way to keep the prizes in view day after day.