The Seminole Tribe partnered with developers Richard Knowlton and William Van Horn, who invested $4 million to build the bingo hall. The Big Cypress bingo hall in the process of being demolished in October 2020. The idea was to change the image of bingo from a staid grandmother’s game to something as exciting as the Super Bowl to perk and retain guests’ interest. Additionally, the lure of non-bingo activities, such as Dixieland bands, closed circuit TV and TV gameshow-type giveaways, proved to be popular. Players were drawn to the bingo hall’s generous cash prizes, up to $250,000, along with plenty of new cars to be won. But the bingo hall didn’t always hit the jackpot it closed and re-opened numerous times before finally shutting its doors in the 1990s. Most players were bussed to BC from cities around the U.S.

The 5,600-seat bingo hall, said to be the size of two football fields, opened with great fanfare in March 1987, even garnering a story in The New York Times. (Tribune file photo)īIG CYPRESS - The Big Cypress bingo facility – once touted as the largest in the world, but reduced to a vacant skeleton for the past several years – was recently demolished to make way for future development. When the Big Cypress bingo hall opened in 1987, thousands of people came to try their luck at high-stakes bingo.

High stake bingo halls