Darlo Uncovered

Since the lottery started in 2012 over £30k has been donated to the club with an equal amount paid out in prize money and the growing success of the lottery (it's now grown to the level where it contributes over £15k/year to the club) suggests that it has the potential to become a major source of stable income which will help us to keep up with our successes on the pitch, and raise the bar of what our sustainable level is going to be.

To help us to do that we've taken things a step further by introducing a new online facility to join the lottery using the same GoCardless Direct Debit secure payments system which has proven itself to be so successful with the DFCSG Membership drive and Fundraising Pitches.

It really is now incredibly easy to join the lottery - if you haven't already bought a ticket then please consider sparing £5/month and giving this a try... it takes just seconds of your time to do so, but please have your bank account details to hand.

Here's how to enter:

1) Go to http://www.darlingtonfcsupportersgroup.org/lottery, choose a ticket appropriate to how many entries you want to make and click on it.

2) This will take you to the GoCardless site where you enter your contact and bank details to set up a Direct Debit.

That's all there is to it!

When you visit the site you can choose a ticket appropriate to the number of entries you want to make - each entry gives you one chance to win a prize in each of the weekly draws and also in the monthly superdraw.

Please click the image below to go straight to the page and make your choice, and please share this link around your family, friends and workmates as anyone can take part and the more people we can get to do that then the bigger the prize fund and the more the club will benefit as the fund is split right down the middle between prizes and donations to the club.

You can also join online at the Fans Table at home games - just bring your bank account details with you and the officials on the table will make your online entry for you.

Keep it going!

Brilliant, I haven't yet joined myself - I keep meaning to. For only £5 or £10 a month it seems a no brainer. A cheap way of giving the club a little bit more support every month.

Who knows, in a couple of years the contribution that the lottery makes to the club might have doubled - there will be a fair few fresh or renewed fans to aim at when we're back at BM. It'd be great if the top prize built up to 2 grand or so.

Excellent, also been meaning to join lottery for a long time.
Your new cardless entry very simple even for old gits like me.

Thanks very much guys, great feedback. I don't know the exact numbers but I do know that we had several new entrants in the lottery yesterday, when we launched the GoCardless thing, so maybe we'll hit the £1000 mark in the Superdraw very soon.

I'd personally like to see the Superdraw held at that level and start to raise the level of the weekly prize money - say to £100 - before increasing the big monthly prize again... i.e. get the weekly prizes up to 10% of the Superdraw before raising the big prize again so, say for every time another £500 is added to the Superdraw we let the weekly prizes catch up to that 10% mark... e.g. we raise enough to pay out a £1500 Superdraw prize then raise the weekly prizes to £150.

We'd be handing over about £23k/year to the club at that rate, and I think we can get there a bit quicker if we raise the weekly prizes to give an added incentive for people to sign up.

Got round to doing mine now as it`s so easy

Mr_Tibbs wrote:Thanks very much guys, great feedback. I don't know the exact numbers but I do know that we had several new entrants in the lottery yesterday, when we launched the GoCardless thing, so maybe we'll hit the £1000 mark in the Superdraw very soon.

I'd personally like to see the Superdraw held at that level and start to raise the level of the weekly prize money - say to £100 - before increasing the big monthly prize again... i.e. get the weekly prizes up to 10% of the Superdraw before raising the big prize again so, say for every time another £500 is added to the Superdraw we let the weekly prizes catch up to that 10% mark... e.g. we raise enough to pay out a £1500 Superdraw prize then raise the weekly prizes to £150.

We'd be handing over about £23k/year to the club at that rate, and I think we can get there a bit quicker if we raise the weekly prizes to give an added incentive for people to sign up.

Totally agreed.

Or have more weekly prizes? 3x £50 would give more people a chance to win so more incentive to join.

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All good ideas - will take away and discuss

45 new entries since the change

divas wrote:All good ideas - will take away and discuss

45 new entries since the change

Great news - we've certainly hit the £1000 mark on the Superdraw.

Just a reminder of the link - be good if we could get this shared around a bit...

http://www.darlingtonfcsupportersgroup.org/lottery

Fantastic idea about making more weekly prizes, the £1000 monthly prize is a massive selling point, but I don't think the weekly prize needs to go up.

It shouldn't be the same odds to win £50 as it is £1000 monthly prize, as it currently stands.

There's around 460 people playing at the moment so the weekly odds of winning a prize are 460/1, and the odds getting longer every time someone new joins up.

Adding more weekly prizes makes the odds of winning something massively more favourable.

1 weekly prize of £50 - odds 460/1
2 weekly prizes of £50 - odds 230/1
3 weekly prizes of £50 - odds 115/1

What a fantastic money raiser this has been for your club.

Yes, more prizes is definitely worth looking at.

I just checked - this time last year the Superdraw prize was around the £500 mark - £500 in October and up to £550 in November - so we've doubled that in the past year.

Definitely worth capping the monthly prize at what is now an extremely attractive pot of £1,000.

If we were to increase to another weekly prize of £50 next, and then make it 3 x weekly prizes by the end of the season then I think we'd find it an extremely attractive proposition.

Also, while I like the multiple entry thing, would that be more attractive if the more entries you bought, you also got free entries? ie pay £50 a month and get 14 entries, pay £25 and get 6 entries? It doesn't affect the amount the club is receiving or giving out but it does encourage people to buy more entries as it increases their chances of winning.

Spyman wrote:Definitely worth capping the monthly prize at what is now an extremely attractive pot of £1,000.

If we were to increase to another weekly prize of £50 next, and then make it 3 x weekly prizes by the end of the season then I think we'd find it an extremely attractive proposition.

Also, while I like the multiple entry thing, would that be more attractive if the more entries you bought, you also got free entries? ie pay £50 a month and get 14 entries, pay £25 and get 6 entries? It doesn't affect the amount the club is receiving or giving out but it does encourage people to buy more entries as it increases their chances of winning.

Yes, it could give the fund another little boost if we bring in a promotion like that. We'd need to make sure all the existing entrants got the same deal.

I'll make sure this idea gets passed on.

Mr_Tibbs wrote:

Spyman wrote:Definitely worth capping the monthly prize at what is now an extremely attractive pot of £1,000.

If we were to increase to another weekly prize of £50 next, and then make it 3 x weekly prizes by the end of the season then I think we'd find it an extremely attractive proposition.

Also, while I like the multiple entry thing, would that be more attractive if the more entries you bought, you also got free entries? ie pay £50 a month and get 14 entries, pay £25 and get 6 entries? It doesn't affect the amount the club is receiving or giving out but it does encourage people to buy more entries as it increases their chances of winning.

Yes, it could give the fund another little boost if we bring in a promotion like that. We'd need to make sure all the existing entrants got the same deal.

I'll make sure this idea gets passed on.

Sorry?

But is this legal?

I've joined up to the raffle on the back of this, and if the terms and conditions are being retro-actively changed, how does this square with your registration for running this promotion with the council?

Mr_Tibbs has no affiliation with the lottery and his comments are purely based on being a player or just like the others in this thread. Any ideas are welcomed but of course will only be implemented by those with the authority once the necessary processes have been followed

If you retroactively gave some players increased chances of winning, but not others (i.e. those who pay the lowest entry price), then it could possibly be controversial.

Anyway, great work on the online system, and good to see it going from strength to strength

I'm not sure how you think it even possible that you can increase the chances of some winning but not others, by changing a facet of the draw?

If the weekly prize went from one draw to three draws, then everyone's chances of winning the weekly draw triples compared to what their chances are now.

I'm all for increasing the weekly £50 draw from 1 to 3, but I would not cap the monthly superdraw at £1,000.

You might end up in a situation where there is enough funding to pay 3 x £50 each week, 1 x £1000 monthly superdraw and also have a spare few quid over, that could only really be added to the superdraw because there might not be enough in the pot to add a 4th £50 weekly prize, and neither would you want to be having to make changes all the time to how the draw is split - as grytters pointed out, authorisation to make changes would probably need to be sought.

Quakerz wrote:I'm not sure how you think it even possible that you can increase the chances of some winning but not others, by changing a facet of the draw?

If the weekly prize went from one draw to three draws, then everyone's chances of winning the weekly draw triples compared to what their chances are now.

But if person A has bought 1 entry, and person B has bought 2 entries, then B has twice the chance of winning each prize as A. If you then retroactively gave B an extra ticket, as suggested above, then they have 3 times the chance of winning as A.

Yes if you had a second (or more) weekly prizes then each ticket has multiple chances of winning, but relative to the initial ticket purchase, you would be devaluing person A relative to person B by giving B extra entries. Some may find this OK, some may find this controversial.

Obviously the reality is not quite as simple as this, particularly with multiple prizes as I'd imagine the second weekly prize won would be drawn without replacement of the ticket which won the first prize, but on the scale we are talking about here, it wouldn't make a huge difference.

al_quaker wrote: But if person A has bought 1 entry, and person B has bought 2 entries, then B has twice the chance of winning each prize as A. If you then retroactively gave B an extra ticket, as suggested above, then they have 3 times the chance of winning as A.

Who suggested giving person B an extra entry?

Person A with 1 ticket has one chance (out of how many total entrants) of winning the weekly draw.

Person B with 2 tickets has two chances (out of how many total entrants) of winning the weekly draw.

Nothing changes if there are 3 weekly draws.

Person A & B have 3 and 6 chances (out of how many total entrants) of winning one of the weekly draws.

Both have trebled their chances.

Quakerz wrote:
Who suggested giving person B an extra entry?

Unless I've misunderstood, Spyman and Mr Tibbs (I'm aware they were speaking in hypotheticals, as was I):

Spyman wrote: Also, while I like the multiple entry thing, would that be more attractive if the more entries you bought, you also got free entries? ie pay £50 a month and get 14 entries, pay £25 and get 6 entries? It doesn't affect the amount the club is receiving or giving out but it does encourage people to buy more entries as it increases their chances of winning.

Mr Tibbs wrote: We'd need to make sure all the existing entrants got the same deal.

I never saw the suggestion of giving free entries (which I think is a bad and complicating idea)

I was talking about the increase in chances for everybody equally if there were more weekly draws (which I think is a good idea, and probably easiest to implement *if* any changes were made)

We were obviously talking about different things, apologies al.

Quakerz wrote:I never saw the suggestion of giving free entries (which I think is a bad and complicating idea)

I was talking about the increase in chances for everybody equally if there were more weekly draws (which I think is a good idea, and probably easiest to implement *if* any changes were made)

We were obviously talking about different things, apologies al.

No worries - I maybe should have quoted the bit I was referring too originally I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea to have cheaper per entry cost the more you invest (although I do think a great strength of the fans lottery is it's simplicity in both entry and return), but some may object if entries are retroactively changed in value (more than the expected decrease in the probability of winning that arises from increased numbers of entrants).

Yes I think more weekly draws is a great idea once it hits a £1000 superdraw. I think from a consumer's point of view having 2 x £50 a week + £1000 monthly draw sells better than 1 x £50 a week, + £1200 monthly super draw (saying that, I haven't worked out how it would work out probabilistically in terms of expected return for a customer for both scenarios)

I don't see how it devalues other people's entries, it just encourages people to buy multiple entries - buy 10 and you get 2 free or whatever. It's a pretty common incentive is it not?

OK maybe slightly complicated in that it hasn't been an option from day one, but if you're that bothered, cancel your original entry and re-enter.

I'm just suggesting ways of increasing uptake of the multiple entries.

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Just to clarify, as editor of the DFCSG website I did help with implementing and promoting the new online facility but, as divas said, I have no other connection with the lottery other than keeping my fingers crossed that one of my numbers comes up.

Part of that promotion is to open the discussion up and make sure that all ideas get passed on to the decision makers so they can keep the lottery growing.

I'm sure the board and lottery organiser will benefit from all that's been said here.