Coral Launch £1 Million Football Jackpot
As the new football season is gearing up to get underway, bookmaker Coral has decided to launch a Football Jackpot, which will see winners walk away with a seven-figure sum. Punters need to put forward just a £1 stake in order to take part in the jackpot, which will be run every weekend during the 2013-2014 football season. The first match that will be part of the promotion will be played on the seventeen of August.
Each week, fifteen matches will be chosen by Coral and players will need to decide whether the result will be a home win, an away win or a draw. If anyone correctly predicts all fifteen results then they will become an instant millionaire, whilst punters that get close but just miss out will receive a consolation prize. Once the first million has gone, the jackpot will built back up again in a progressive manner.
How the Promotion Works
Bookmakers are always looking for a new way to attract customers to their stores or sites. The result is that weird and wonderful promotions are constantly being cooked up in the hope that it will give them the edge over one of their bookmaking rivals. Coral’s latest idea to win punters around is the chance to win a million pound by correctly predicting the outcome of fifteen different matches.
It is the first promotion of its kind and Coral will ask customers to predict the outcome of fifteen different matches, deciding whether one of the teams will win or it will end in a draw. It will cost punters £1 to enter the Football Jackpot, which they can do either in person or by using technology. The eighteen hundred Coral shops around the country will have coupons to fill in, or you do it on the company’s website or with their app.
The first person to correctly identify the results from the fifteen matches selected during a game week will win £1 million. Customers that miss out by predicting thirteen or fourteen matches correctly will win a cash prize as consolation, with the amount depending on the size of the pool, as well as the number of those who deserve a consolation prize. Punters can either make their own selections or just opt for a Lucky Dip.
Is It a Good Promotion?
Whilst it might seem odd to ask a question about whether it is a good promotion when you consider that it offers you the chance to win a million, it’s not an unreasonable one. After all, what are the odds like if you were to pick fifteen random football matches and look to put an accumulator bet on the outcomes? We did exactly that with Coral and got odds of 24,799,273.43/1.
Obviously that’s an imperfect comparison as we haven’t picked the exact matches that Coral will offer on their first coupon, but it does give you a sense of just how long the odds are on correctly predicting the outcome of so many matches. The other reason it’s an unfair comparison is that we’ve picked results at random, sometimes opting for long odds rather than just the favourites.
If we change our selection to only pick the favourites in each match then the accumulator odds offered by Coral change to 2,379.44/1. It’s fair to say that if you bet on that Acca then you’d be disappointed if every bet came in and you won just over £2,000 for your £1 bet whilst someone else won £1 million. Yet even that is an unfair bet to place, given that not everyone will always bet on the favourite.
The truth, then, lies somewhere in the middle of the two outcomes. If you’re unsure then you might want to look to see how much your selections for Coral’s Football Jackpot would be if you placed them in a straight accumulator bet rather than as part of the company’s new promotion. If they work out as anything less than 1,000,000/1 then you should go with Coral’s Football Jackpot.
The other thing to think about, of course, is the fact that Coral has a maximum payout of £1 million on Grade 1 football bets. That means that there’s no point in betting £2 or more on your 1,000,000/1 Acca as the company will only pay you out £1 million if the bet comes in. Of course, there’s a reason the odds are as long as they are on an accumulator bet that offers 1,000,000/1, which is something else you’ll want to consider.
Why Coral Are Doing It
Giving away £1 million isn’t something that bookmakers are all that keen to do. Let’s not forget that this is an industry that will limit or even close accounts for being too successful, so the idea of giving away a seven-figure sum on a £1 stake will go against everything that the Coral management stands for. The question naturally arises, therefore, why are they doing it?
The answer, as is so often the case when it comes to bookmakers and promotions, lies in how many customers they attract thanks to the new promotion. The company has reportedly spent over £1 million on the advertising campaign for the new offer, so they’re obviously prepared to speculate to accumulate. With more than two million customers, if Coral can persuade half of them to take part they’ve made their money back.
That’s just on the first work. Even if only a quarter of Coral’s customers took part in the promotion then the bookmaker would stand to make its money back after four weeks, presuming there are no winners during that time. If they attract new customers in the meantime then the promotion will have done its job. Customers bet on more than just football, so Coral will be banking on a football promotion earning them some big bucks.
