The people of Cheshire who go in for the Irish Lotto can now use the Paddy Power website to bet on the outcome.
With regular over the counter channels for lottery games, including newsagents and corner shops, currently closed, a surge in online searches has prompted the Irish bookmaker to digitalise this service that was already available in their betting shops, leading to a spike in web search volume for the brand.
Paddy Power has built up a reputation as a major force in the industry after merging with fellow bookies Betfair and use memorable advertising around the popular betting sports of football and horse racing. Chester itself has a racecourse where Flat horses run.
This is the site of the May Festival, which is usually held in between Guineas Weekend at Newmarket in Suffolk and the Dante meeting at York, where races like the Cheshire Oaks, Chester Vase and Dee Stakes take place. These are important trials for the Classics open to three-year-olds at Epsom Downs.
Ex-England footballer and former Cheshire resident Peter Crouch has joined Paddy Power as a brand ambassador recently. He stars in this skit alongside former Irish champion jumps jockey Ruby Walsh:
But back now to the Irish Lotto. Paddy Power aren’t lottery operators themselves, so they instead offer betting markets on official draws like Ireland’s equivalent of the National Lottery and the Irish Daily Millions.
If you want to bet on either through them, then you need to sign up for a Paddy Power account. Visit the website and click on Join Now to go through registration.
There is a simple form for you to fill in with your personal details like name, date of birth, and address. You must also come up with a password, and security question and answer, to help protect your account.
Before you can place your bets on any lotteries, you do need to deposit funds. Credit cards are no longer an accepted payment option following regulatory changes to the gambling industry, but debit cards remain valid.
Paddy Power also makes it clear what the Irish Lotto betting odds online are of getting numbers on a line in a draw. In case you have never bet on anything like this before but are interested, there are 47 balls that go into the tumbler machine (for Irish Daily Millions, there are fewer with 39).
That means you have a 6/1 chance of predicting one of those on a line of five numbers. Seven balls are drawn in the Irish Lotto (six and a bonus) with the Main, Plus 1 and Plus 2 draws taking place from 7:45 pm on Saturday and Wednesday nights.
You must enter each draw separately. In order to get a return on your bet, you need to get two numbers to come up and this outcome has odds of 60/1.
Greater payouts come from getting three, four, or all five numbers. The odds increase here to 700/1, 7200/1 and 130000/1 respectively, but by including the bonus ball on your betslip via a tick box you can increase your chances to 40000/1.
The Irish Daily Millions has different odds of predicting the right numbers with fewer to pick from. It’s 5/1 to have one on a line and 33/1 for two, while three is a 375/1 chance, four is 3250/1 and five 50000/1.
Again, you can turn the odds in your favour by including the bonus ball. This gives you 15000/1 that you get all five numbers.
As its name suggests, the Irish Daily Millions draws takes place every day at 2 pm and 9 pm. There is a main and bonus draw. Whatever lottery interests you, Paddy Power have a maximum win threshold of €/£500,000 on all games and bets.