EGaming:
The EGaming Team consists of 4 main areas: Casino, Poker, Games and Bingo:
Paddy Power Casino is our original Casino. We've 75+ Flash-based games covering Blackjack, Roulette, Video Poker and Slots. Some of our most popular games are branded games like Monopoly, Transformers and Dungeons & Dragons. Paddy Power Download went live in January 2009, it's different to the Instant version, as the name suggests, and needs to be downloaded by players before it can be played. It offers more than 60 games and there's Slots, Video Poker and Table games. Our partner on Paddy Power Download is Boss Media who also work with us on our third current Casino, Two Sixes. Two Sixes pre dates Paddy Power Download Casino and was our first Casino Download product having launched in September 2008. The goal with Two Sixes is to explore what potential we have to drive new revenues doing things differently on that product as opposed to our Paddy Power branded Casinos. Paddy Power Live Casino launches later in 2009 and will present to players a live Casino experience with real dealers working real time. The partner on this product is Evolution. To get all of the work done of these products we've a core Paddy Power Casino team of 6; 4 people dedicated to Instant and 2 working on the Downloads and Live Casino. It's never a dull moment and there's never a shortage of work!
Paddy Power Poker was launched in 2005 and is currently part of the iPoker network of PlayTech having moved from Tribeca in 2007. The Paddy Power Poker software offers great functionality, attractive graphics and good security and stability with a variety of games such as Chinese Poker, Hold'em, Seven-Card Stud Hi, Omaha Hi and Hi-Lo with both ring games and multi-table tournaments offered. Live Events include: The Irish Open. Europe's oldest Texas Holdem Poker tournament is Paddy Power Poker's signature event held over Easter weekend every year. With a large multi-national field players have the chance to qualify online earning the chance to compete for an estimated €2.5M prize pool. The Paddy Power Poker Irish Winter Festival is held over the October bank holiday weekend this Texas Holdem Poker tournament provides a more affordable live poker experience. Players from all over the globe travel to compete for an estimated festival prize pool of €1M. The Paddy Power Poker team is a team of 6 including 2 Operations staff, 2 in Marketing and 1 person managing the events all reporting to the Poker P&L Manager.
Paddy Power Games launched in November 2004 and was positioned to attract the recreational Casino-style games player. Since its launch Paddy Power Games has expanded from just 3 games to 115 richly entertaining Flash games and we're adding new games all the time. The current mix of games product includes Slots, Jackpot games, Roulette, Blackjack, Virtual Sports, Video Poker, and TV show themed games. Paddy Power Games currently takes games from 13 different suppliers and in the effort to continue to offer our customers the best quality and most appealing games product our list of suppliers is only likely to grow. Games are now a very significant part of the Paddy Power Online business and we bring back thousands of players a month to the site. The team that works on Paddy Power Games is currently 4 individuals growing to 6 in the coming period. These individuals split the work between Marketing, Product/Operations and New Business. There is an overall P&L Manager who overseas planning, performance and who manages the team. The focus for the next phase of the development of Paddy Power Games is to continue improving the games product that we promote to customers, to increase the awareness for our offer in the marketplace particularly in our target customer markets and to do an even better job of retaining players and delivering value back to Paddy Power.
Paddy Power Bingo launched in June 2006 on the TGN Network. In October 2007 we moved from TGN to partner with Parlay Games launching with 3 Bingo rooms and a selection of Side games including Cleopatra, Monopoly and some Casino-style games.
Following customer research in the UK & Ireland the Paddy Power Bingo website underwent a major re-design in December 2008. The new look and feel of the site is much more female focused; fun and friendly and something of a departure from the traditional Paddy Power branding. This development brought Paddy Power Bingo in line with its competitors in the market and was well received by most of our customers and the industry. In 2008 we were awarded Best Newcomer of the Year at the Bingo Summit. To continue the development of the product and to grow the Bingo business we recently changed platform partner again, moving from Parlay to Virtue Fusion - this happened in April 2009. This move enables us to offer customers more Bingo rooms (7 in total) including network rooms and a wider assortment of Side games (now more than 60 games). Paddy Power Bingo is a growing business and is well placed over the next period to increase share in the UK market with a competitive product and an excellent partner in Virtue Fusion. The Bingo team currently consists of four people; 2 individuals working in Operations, 1 in Marketing and the Bingo P&L Manager managing the team overall.
Online Development:
This group is responsible for Product Development within Paddy Power for the Online Business units and the Dial-A-Bet operation.
Our mandate is to enable our online business more effectively retail their products. This is achieved by delivering IT projects which add features to our customer facing products and back office systems. Essentially we meet the demand of the business with supply from our technology partners (both in-house and external).
The team currently has 28 staff across four main disciplines covering business analysis, usability experience, project management and graphic design.
Our Business Analysts work very closely with our online operations teams (e.g. Sportsbook, eGaming, Trader etc.). Using their product and technical knowledge they produce detailed requirements specifications to enhance the online products and services. They maintain our product roadmaps and are essential in delivering projects into our live production environments.
Our Usability Experience team consists of a number of UX specialists whose responsibility it is to ensure the customer gets the best possible experience when they are interacting with Paddy Power online.
Our Graphic Design team provides services to both our online and print media channels. The team currently consists of website; creative and print graphic designers who provide artwork and design assets to all of our online environments. They are involved in development projects; email design; multi-media; online and print advertising; print brochures and merchandise.
The PM group provides project management for all of our software development releases. They are responsible for pulling together the various components, artefacts and deliverables from all internal teams and 3rd parties involved in our Sportsbook, eGaming and Web Development releases.
Online Sportsbook:
Online Sportsbook was launched in Ireland in June 2000, with entry in to the UK in March 2001. Since then it's gone from strength to strength and established itself as one of the Top 5 online bookmakers in the UK. We are now aiming for World domination, starting with Australia where we recently acquired a controlling stake in their biggest corporate bookmaker Sportsbet in Australia. The Online Sportsbook has achieved this growth through focus on fairness to the punter, value and product innovation. Home of the Money-Back Special, we have built a reputation as the punter's pal, often paying out ‘unlucky' losing punters or refunding when they've not had had a fair run. We get it wrong sometimes (paying out on Tiger Woods to win the 2009 USPGA for example), but our punters love us for that. We also give them guaranteed prices on all UK and Irish horse and greyhound racing and often give extra places on each-way bets. Our product offering is second to none. We offer a wider range of markets than any of our competitors, and will price almost anything our customers ask for. We combine this with continuous product development, to ensure we always stay one step ahead. Live video streaming, real-time betting-in-running stats, and mobile betting are just a few examples. With the increasing penetration of broadband and our strategy to acquire market share from our competitors in the UK, we expect the Online Sportsbook to continue to be a significant driver of Paddy Power.
Online Operations:
"We take fun seriously"
Having a good Experience at paddypower.com doesn't happen by accident. Funny advertising and a nice website need to be underpinned with a great service.
Paddy Power Sportsbook, Poker, Casino, Games and Bingo share a number of critical services. Online Operations is the part of the business that takes responsibility for these services.
They vary hugely from Customer Data Protection to Responsible Gaming but the three key areas are Customer Service, Payment Processing and Fraud prevention.
Customer Service
Customer Service has developed from the days of simple phone support at paddypower.com. Online chat is now our most popular form of contact, you can make an appointment for us to call you and email us without needing to log into your email account. We can even find you when you're having problems on our site and offer you support.
A few questions we're currently developing the answers to are:
- How can we know who's contacting us before they tell us?
- How can we know our customers' problems before they do?
- How can we remove the need for our customers to have to contact us in the first place?
Payment Processing
Millions of Euro comes in to and goes out of Paddy Power accounts every day. It's our responsibility to make sure any customer who wants to transact on paddypower.com can.
Want to use your PayPal account? Want to transfer funds directly from your bank account? Want to get your money back in hard cash? It's our job to let you do just that.
Fraud Prevention
Internet fraud costs online businesses like ours billions every year. It's the responsibility of the Online Operations team to ensure paddypower.com is kept fraud free. Working with some of the most cutting edge anti-fraud technology allows us to do that.
Because of our position we get great insight into the business and how it operates. We get to work with every team within the company and are fully immersed in the development and innovation that makes Paddy Power so successful.
