2004

20th Century 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Needless to say, all 7 horses won and her €10 was transformed into €424,710. The biggest win any of our customers had ever had. There were red carpets, bottles of champagne and swanky lunches flanked by TV crews – those were the days!

Another first in 2004 was our first foray into animal sponsorship. Croke Park was invaded by a Jack Russell during Ireland’s Compromised Rules match against Australia.

The game was delayed, the dog was caught, but then the dog went missing. After a national radio campaign, Broc was found. We immediately signed up Broc to launch our new paddypowergames business – many thought we were barking mad to do it but he proved the perfect brand ambassador.

Any follower of Paddy Power will know that we don’t exactly follow convention. When announcing our annual results we usually take the rare opportunity to humiliate both the CEO and CFO by having them photographed in some sort of compromising position.

In 2004, we managed to set fire to the Chief Exec. It was like something out of “When photo-shoots go wrong”!

The idea was that John O’Reilly (the then CEO) was to look all Roman holding and Olympic torch while dressed in a Toga. Everything went swimmingly until Ken Robertson (then marketing manager, now cleaner) tried to extinguish the Olympic flame down a shore full of dry leaves!

Some of the burning oil splashed on to John’s Toga and for a frantic few moments we thought that for the first time it would be the bookies with their fingers burnt!

This was also the year which saw the dawning of a new era for Paddy Power punters with the launch of both paddypowerpoker and paddypowercasino. We were now truly an all encompassing betting company.