Lucky Ireland’s Leading Online Gambling Companies
The Irish people are famed the world over for their love of all things equine. This ranges from breeding and training leading racehorses to betting on the races that they compete in. So it stands to reason that there is also deep-rooted love of betting among many Irish adults as well.
The figures more than bear out this proposition. It’s estimated that around 66% of the adult population indulge in the activity annually and that 2019 saw €9.8 billion placed in wagers of different kinds over the year.
Undoubtedly, the most popular form of gambling is the Irish national lottery that generated sales of €1.053 billion in 2021 and which has created many millionaires since it was first launched back in 1986.
There is also great interest in entering other lotteries from around the world and certain online gambling companies in Ireland make this possible. While not actually selling tickets in the lotteries from countries as diverse as the USA and Poland, they use the same draw numbers each week and issue their own prizes.
The other hugely popular form of gambling in the country is on sports in general. In recent times, there has also been the move for much of this activity to go online and at least three leading operators have emerged.
Because of this focus on sports, it’s also not a huge leap of logic to see why some began life primarily as high-street book makers, gradually making the transition to the online world.
For example, BoyleSports was set up in 1982 by an entrepreneur called John Boyle with his first shop in Co. Armagh. Gradually, over the years more and more outlets were opened both in the North and the Republic of Ireland and today it is the largest bookmaker brand in Ireland with a total of 268 retail betting shops.
Image Credit: “SONY KINDLY INVITED ME TO A DAY AT THE RACES” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by infomatique
The company has subsequently established partnership deals with platform solutions companies in order to offer online betting and is also very active in sports sponsorship including for Coventry City FC.
A more direct route to the online world was made by QuinnBet. This family firm was set up in 2017 by the father and son team of Sean Sr and Sean Jr in association with FSB Technology, a leading name in the world of betting platforms and tech. At the same time as the company launched its sportsbook featuring over 20 different sports, the online casino element of the business also came into being under the name of QuinnCasino. Like BoyleSports, QuinnBet has also been very active in drawing up sponsorship deals to increase its brand profile.
But both of these are dwarfed by the mega-business Paddy Power. Ever since it was created from the merger of three Irish bookmakers in 1988 it has been on a huge acquisition drive to create today’s multi-billion euro business.
With revenues rising across the board, we can probably expect to see many more arrivals on the Irish online gambling scene in future.
Whether any will manage to rival these three, only time will tell.
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