When you know your partner well enough, you can almost anticipate what they're going to say next.
The wives and girlfriends of enthusiastic sports fans have taken this trick to the next level.
While watching football together, several women have shared hilarious videos of their Super Bowl bingo cards predicting their partners' reactions to the games, with answers like "claps aggressively," "stands up," "sighs loudly," and "yells at defense."
Many of these videos have gone viral on TikTok as sports fans prepare for Super Bowl Sunday.
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For the less athletically-inclined halves of these relationships, the bingo card trend provides a fun way to get involved with their significant other's hobbies.
TODAY.com spoke to three women who created bingo cards for their football-loving partners. Read on to find out if your partner shares any of these common reactions.
A bingo bonding moment at the bar
Entertainment News
Maria Rising, 29, decided to make her own Super Bowl bingo card for her boyfriend after seeing other TikTok creators posting videos of their bingo cards.
Rising brought a batch of her bingo cards to her favorite local bar where she and her boyfriend were watching a Detroit Lions game, and began filling out her card as her boyfriend watched the game.
Her bingo card included reactions such as “jumps up,” “both hands on head,” “opens a beer,” and “air punching.”
The bartender spotted her bingo cards and complimented them, so Rising offered the rest of her cards to the other bar patrons.
“People started getting bingos and they were like bringing them back to me and showing me and it was so much fun,” she says. “Everybody was so electric.”
While Rising herself isn’t particularly tuned into football, her boyfriend is a huge Lions fan.
“My boyfriend has the funniest reactions to things,” she says.
After the success of her first bingo card, she plans to make another bingo game for the upcoming Super Bowl game on Sunday.
Bingo brought spouses into the game
Diana Sims always enjoys seeing her wife’s enthusiastic reactions to sports games, so she created a surprise bingo card for her.
“She thought it was hilarious,” Sims says. “She didn’t know I was doing it.”
Sims, 29, was inspired by other creators’ bingo cards online.
“I’ve seen like a few people do like playoffs bingo, or other little games to kind of make sports, or other things that their significant other are into, fun for them, too,” she says. “I just felt like it was an opportunity for me to engage in the sport with my partner while we watched it together.”
For Sims and her wife, the bingo game also became a bonding moment.
“She was in shock, like, ‘Wow, you really know me,” Sims says.
Sims and her wife, who both live in Michigan, are fans of multiple sports, so Sims plans to create more bingo cards.
“Her reactions are elite. It’s just so funny to watch her,” Sims says.
Tori Harper, 28, created her bingo card for similar reasons.
Harper videoed her husband’s reactions as they watched the Texas Longhorns play in the college football national championships.
“I know him really well, so I was like, I’m pretty sure I can pinpoint the things he says. I just wanted to have some fun with it,” she says.
Harper’s TikTok video about the bingo game garnered 6.6 million views and over 622,000 likes.
“It definitely went viral,” she says. “A lot of people were reaching out to him because they saw him in the video.”
Neither Harper nor her boyfriend expected the video to get so popular but they have enjoyed seeing people’s positive reactions.
“I think it’s just the relatability,” she says. “I got a load of comments from girlfriends and wives, and they could just really relate to watching sports with their significant other. A lot of it was ‘Oh, my husband or my boyfriend does that,’ and they really could just relate to it.”
From bingo to business
Kelly Burke, 25, was inspired to try out the trend after seeing other creators' bingo card videos. She says that family and friends urged her to make a bingo card for her husband due to his "hilarious" reactions.
Burke filmed her husband's reactions to each play of a Detroit Lions game as she filled in the bingo card, which included cues like "swears," "crosses arms," "falls to floor," and "aggressive claps."
She posted her first TikTok video about the bingo card on Jan. 5, and it quickly went viral, with a current total of 12.7 million views and nearly 2 million likes. Since then, Burke has posted several popular follow-up videos.
(Warning: The video below contains some profanity.)
Burke's videos provided more than just entertainment for the couple.
"When we noticed that the first video was going viral and getting a lot of attention, a big comment that was being left on the video was that people wanted to purchase the card," she says.
Burke was inspired to create a digital version of her bingo card, which was originally written in marker and pencil on a piece of notebook paper.
She and her boyfriend brainstormed ideas for what to write on the bingo cards, and she began selling them on Etsy as PDFs.
“If you think about it, people are really busy these days. Either they don’t have the time, the creativity, or they’re not familiar with sports and they don’t know what to put in the squares,” she says.
Since then, Burke’s bingo business has experienced a significant level of demand. So far, she says she has made about $2,000 in profit.
"I didn't expect it to blow up," she says.
Burke is less of a sports enthusiast than her boyfriend, but she feels that the bingo card game is a fun way for couples to connect.
"I was kind of surprised to see that there was a market for this and that people really wanted it and appreciate it," she continues. "I've gotten really good reviews on Etsy. People are really, really, really happy with it."
Burke and her boyfriend have both been recognized in public by people who follow her account, which grew from around 3,000 followers before the bingo video to over 30,000 afterward.
“I had to push through that skepticism a little bit and see where it led me,” she says. “I’m so glad that I did.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
