PUNTERS: How Paddy Power's Billion-Euro Bet Changed Gambling Forever

The story of Paddy Power’s growth from a small chain of Irish bookies to the biggest gambling company in the world.

Stewart Kenny, the co-founder and mastermind of Paddy Power, illustrates how the company’s appetite for more profit and even more market share led it to neglect its corporate social responsibility and helped to feed the explosion in online gambling addiction. In 2016, Kenny quit the company board over the failure of management to tackle problem gambling among its customers.

From a modest start, Kenny traded up and up, joining forces with property tycoon John Corcoran, and revered third-generation bookie Richard Power. Corcoran’s indiscriminate ‘build, build, build’ approach and government connections combined with the cache of the Power name established Paddy Power as a distinctly Irish brand at a time of lax gambling regulation, and brought it to the high street.

Like a good gambler, Paddy Power always found an edge. Broadcasting international horse races in-store, out-of-hours telephone betting, irreverent marketing and online betting services all served to keep the house well ahead of the competition, not to mention the punters.

The initial acceptance that problem gamblers were profitable soon escalated to actively exploiting them, overriding ‘responsible gambling’ protocols and paying off complainants.

Later this year, Paddy Power’s parent group, Flutter, will merge with a Canadian online company The Stars Group to become the biggest gambling firm in the world. Based on last year’s accounts, it would have had a €4 billion annual revenue; this book will explore the true cost of achieving that.