Bookies cash in but joke is on punters
WHY HUDDERSFIELD STUNT IS IN POOR TASTE
PADDY POWER probably consider it their best joke since they offered odds on Oscar Pistorius being convicted of the premeditated murder of Reeva Steenkamp — ‘Money back if he walks,’ as their publicity stated at the time.
In what marketeers like to call the ‘second bounce’ — the followup publicity burst after an initial piece of attention-seeking — the self-proclaimed masters of banterism suggested yesterday that their Huddersfield Town sponsorship would trigger the start of a logo-less ‘Save our shirt’ campaign, rather than entailing the team wearing their name on a shoulder-to-waist sash all season.
There will be no such ‘campaign’, of course. Just as David Ginola was never going to stand as FIFA president after being paid a sixfigure sum by the same bookie to become their candidate in 2015: another occasion on which they attempted to persuade the gullible that there was some kind of virtue behind their strategy to hook in
more gamblers. Paddy Power were not at all interested in a discussion about the Huddersfield deal.
Sportsmail’s inquiries, made yesterday through the firm’s ‘UK PR and Mischief Champion’, was passed up the hierarchy to ‘Head of Communications’ James Midmer.
No one was willing to talk about the campaign, nor were the Championship club who had proved as eager to wear their sash as Nicolas Bendtner had been to sport Paddy Power underpants in 2012.
The firm could not care less if their name features on the shirt of the Championship team.
They have already more than recouped the outlay on a supposed one-year, £500,000 deal through white noise and — judging by social media — persuading some Huddersfield fans into thinking they are doing someone a favour.
A healthy percentage of the grateful are likely to sign up to their betting accounts. Happy days. Their shirt is a ‘tiny, marginal thing’, said a respected analyst.
‘The company doesn’t need to worry about small details like that when it has used the club to make a splash. People get the joke. Their job is done.’
The firm said it was ‘calling on brands to stop sponsoring football shirts — including fellow betting companies’. This is the kind of cynicism which makes Paddy Power so detested by its rivals. The ‘clean shirt’ is a one-time joke. No bookmaker is going to enter into an arrangement which will be considered a competitor’s idea.
Payday lenders aside, fans have no problem with a company’s name being on their team’s shirt.
Charities committed to dealing with gambling addiction despair that Huddersfield have validated such a perniciously manipulative firm by partnering with them. ‘Even as a stunt, this is highly irresponsible and doesn’t change the fact loads of young fans will have seen the logo,’ said James Mildred of the charity CARE, which is trying to combat gambling addiction. ‘These stunts give the impression gambling is just a laugh. We don’t think it’s a joke.’
Sportsmail asked Paddy Power specifically what they are doing to help deal with gambling addictions which have rocketed over the years. A report by the Gambling Commission last November showed that the number of child gamblers has quadrupled in just two years. The Commission’s figures suggest 450,000 children aged 11-16 bet on a regular basis, while 55,000 children are classed as problem gamblers.
For Paddy Power, it will be the US market next. The liberalisation of gambling laws, after a Supreme Court ruling struck down a ban on sports gambling in most states, has created what analysts expect to be a new gold rush. British football is seen as the model.
We are at the end of the week in which the company’s ‘ jokes’ included a billboard at the Open reminding Tiger Woods of the car crash which began his fall from grace. The marketing industry feels the firm is, in the words of one analyst, a ‘tiresome nuisance, tired and crude, like the bloke who wears funny socks’.
But for as long there is the next Ginola, Bendtner or Huddersfield, they are sure to be around, having a laugh, hooking the punters in and signing them up for bets.