For many sports bettors, it is interesting to see quite how much bookies give away in rewards; free bets, best odds guarantee, free games, extra places, etc.
Offers are in place to reward you with when you place wagers or deposit. Therefore, it has become common for some brands to release information on how much they have handed out this way. Paddy Power is one such bookmaker.
While this brand may have a name for its controversial ads and marketing, it does offer some top rewards, too. Recently, Paddy Power released its value report for 2022. The result? It gave away £229 million to registered bettors over the 12-month period.
Of course, huge events like the World Cup in Qatar and the Cheltenham Festival helped with this. Punters were ready and waiting for the promotions to go live at the site. This led to them scooping them up in big numbers, which shows from the value report. Let’s take a look at a breakdown of this total amount and delve a little deeper into things.
The Full Breakdown
How did Paddy Power give most of the £229 million away? Here is the breakdown of the rewards handed out.
- A total of £12 million given away via free racing bets to punters.
- A huge £62 million went to players through the Best Odds Guaranteed on Racing promotion.
- £32.7 million handed out on extra place specials.
- Members of the Paddy’s Rewards Club took a fantastic £44.5 million in free bets.
- There was a total of £3.26 million awarded through the Beat the Drop promotion.
- Completely free bet builders issued a total of £25.5 million.
- £15.3 million given to customers through the Free Bet If One Leg Lets You Down Accas offer.
- £3 million on the 2 Up promotion.
- Player Justice Refunds sit at £2.8 million.
- The total in free bets on other sports stands at £3.2 million.
- Extra Places in golf paid out an additional £2.4 million.
- 2022 saw a fantastic £14.5 million provided in jackpots from Paddy Power Games.
- Wonder Wheel prizes reached a total of £6.3 million.
- An extra £651,000 came from the Wonder Wheel Bonus Round spins.
- The total amount given away via the Wonder Wheel Bonus Rounds stands at £1.7 million.
We’ve also got a little extra information for you about some of those figures. When it comes to the horse racing sector – one of Paddy Power’s favourites – the brand paid out on Jonbon. As it happens, he is racing in next year’s Cheltenham Festival Arkle Trophy race. After viewing video footage of Jonbon in practice, the bookie decided it would pay out ahead of the race. Therefore, anyone who had backed the horse to win the 2023 Arkle before November 9 got a great reward.
It’s also the case that the online casino section of Paddy Power experienced some big wins. In one case, a lucky gamer from the UK achieved a £1.7 million victory. Playing the Bonanza Megapays slot, the punter went ahead with a 60p wager. That win came right before Christmas, netting her a total of £1,710,466.42. The winning grandmother from East Anglia said that she and her husband planned to take early retirement.
Best Odds Guarantee Is The Most Expensive Promotion
The £229 million total given away by Paddy Power is a large number on the face of it, although you need to consider that not all the money given away translate to loses as much of this is free bets, etc., where the brand would expect the customer to lose more than it pays out in free bets. Paddy Power also earn billions in revenue so while £229 million is a huge number it isn’t denting their profits too much – in fact it is probably improving them on the basis they keep customers loyal.
Various punters registered with the brand will have benefitted from that extra money. It is, of course, quite surprising news that certain rewards cost more money to Paddy Power.
For example, the biggest payout came from the Best Odds Guaranteed promotion. That saw £62 million distributed to horse race betting participants. The next in line, Paddy’s Rewards Club, was responsible for £44.5 million. That’s £17.5 million less from the company’s official rewards scheme compared to BOG – which some may find surprising.
Is there any wonder that Paddy Power controversially removed this offer from 16 British racetracks in 2022? With such a vast cost to the company, it is likely that it wanted to keep control over this. Yet the move came as a bit of a surprise to some.
Best Odds Guaranteed is something that many bookmakers provide at racecourses and online. Through it, players can back a horse at a fixed price. Should the starting price (SP) be higher than the fixed odds you took, you’ll receive the SP odds.
It’s not an uncommon promotion to see, with many brands offering it. Without a doubt, Paddy Power’s decision to remove it from those 16 tracks has likely had an effect. Customers who enjoy benefitting from Best Odds Guaranteed can use another bookie. The company received quite the backlash for the move on social media, too.
Yet the reason for doing it is, as noted, most likely due to the money Paddy Power is losing out on through it. £62 million is a vast amount of money to be giving away. Sportsbooks don’t like to lose money in such huge amounts. There is a likelihood that the brand sought out the tracks where the offer had the most uptake. Those 16 tracks were then focused on and had the offer removed.
It’s not the first bookmaker to take aim at the Best Odds Guaranteed offer, though. Sky Bet, which comes under the Flutter Entertainment group like Paddy Power, did so as well. Their decision was to reduce the offer to selected racing events, rather than on all meetings.
Could it be the case that other bookmakers will follow suit with this? Is the Best Odds Guarantee offer under serious threat? Only time will tell on that.
