Guide

Tombola 90 vs bingo 75: the differences, and which to pick

They only look like the same game from a distance. The card, the prizes and — above all — how long a game runs are all different.

Updated 18 August 2026 · 3 min read

The short version

The card changes how you read it

A tombola card is wide and mostly empty: three rows of five numbers scattered across nine columns. You read it by zones, because each column holds one decade, and most cells are blank. Finding a number takes a beat longer — but it is a pleasant beat.

A 75-ball bingo card is a full square: five columns headed B, I, N, G, O, each drawing from its own range, with the centre cell already marked. When "G 52" is called you know exactly which column to look at, and that column has only five cells. It is faster to scan — it was designed to be shouted across a large hall.

The prizes change the shape of the game

Tombola spreads five targets across the game: two, three, four and five in a row, then the full card. The early ones arrive quickly and keep people with unlucky cards involved; the last one can take a very long time. It is a structure built for a long evening with pauses between prizes.

Bingo 75 has two: the line (a complete row, column or diagonal, with the free space counting as marked) and the bingo, meaning the whole card. Fewer targets means fewer interruptions and a game that ends sooner — handy when you have twenty minutes rather than an hour.

Which to choose

Pick tombola 90 if…

• your group is Italian, or already knows the rules;
• you have time and want the game to accompany a dinner or an afternoon;
• you want more prizes to hand out, perhaps one per tier;
• you like the sestina effect: six cards covering every number from 1 to 90, so somebody marks something on every single draw.

Pick bingo 75 if…

• your group is international: "bingo" needs no translation, "quaterna" does;
• you have a short window — a lunch break, the tail of a meeting;
• you want people to check a card in one second, possibly while doing something else;
• two prizes are enough: one consolation, one real.

How long each one runs, in draws

This is the difference you feel at the table. In tombola 90 the early prizes come quickly — two in a row usually inside the first ten to fifteen draws, once a few dozen cards are in play — but the full card takes patience: expect it somewhere between the sixtieth and the eightieth of ninety draws. The final stretch, when two or three numbers are still missing, is both the longest and the tensest part.

In bingo 75 the pool is smaller and there are only two targets: a line often falls within the first twenty to twenty-five draws, and a full card usually before the sixtieth. In practice, with the same number of players, a 75-ball game runs about a third shorter. The same rule applies to both: the more cards in play, the sooner the prizes land.

The third option: a custom game

There is a format that is neither: instead of numbers you supply your own entries — phrases heard in meetings, team names, corporate clichés. You need at least twelve and can use up to ninety; each card is a 3 × 3 grid and there are two prizes, the line and the full card. It gets the biggest laugh, but it costs you half an hour of preparation to write a decent list — and the list has to be written for the people reading it, not only for the person writing it.

In practice

If the group has no preference, tombola 90 is the safer choice for an evening and bingo 75 for a break. Either way the mechanics on Tombolino are identical: create the game, send the link, everyone gets their cards, the server calls the prizes. Changing format means creating a new game, so decide before you send the invitation. The full tombola rules are here; if you are playing with colleagues, this is the step-by-step.