As a registered company, Tombola was established in 1999 by Phil Cronin. He had previously worked for his family's business Edward Thompson printers, until 1995. Under the Edward Thompson company name, the Cronin family have provided printed paper bingo tickets to bingo halls since the 1960s. Tombola 'soft launched' in December 2005 using the Sun Newspaper as a brand, but retaining control of the business. The official launch went ahead in January 2006 as SunBingo. The Sun newspaper provided marketing and branding while Tombola provided the website site, the games, staff, and technical infrastructure. This continued until August 2008 when Tombola became independent from the Sun, continuing on as Tombola, with all the staff being retained at that time. SunBingo continued with the Sun using JackpotJoy software as all Tombola games had been produced in-house by Tombola technicians and continue to do so. The Sun hired their own chat moderating staff as all chat moderation staff working until that time remained with Tombola. In November 2011, Cronin was awarded Durham & Wearside Business Executive of the Year. Since 2019, Tombola House is on Low Street, on the
River Wear, half a mile from the center of Sunderland. In January 2022,
Flutter Entertainment completed the acquisition of Tombola and Cronin stepped down as CEO and sole owner. ==Gaming licences==