GoLoud Cash Machine

I'd take the odd punt on a horse or even (for my stupidity) buy a lotto ticket, though I wouldn't stand in a queue to buy one.

On the other hand my daughter doesn't gamble on horses, or the lottery, but I was surprised to learn she plays this game. I think it's insidious how it has such a captive market, and potentially deceptive in terms of being pitched as just a bit of fun, but may really be a money making racket.

My view would be that the law should regulate any competition for prizes open to the general public, or with say more than 20 people entered so they have to publish after each competition, a statement of income, payouts and profit. That's the only way to know what you are buying in to.

As to whether money making draws are an appropriate use for regulated radio/TV airwaves, that's a completely separate question which should be regulated separately in my opinion.

That’s the thing. They limit you to twelve entries per week so that’s €30 max per week spent. Some people spend more on coffee! If it bankrupts someone, they’ve likely got more financial problems than just they enter all the time

Does anyone know today's amount?

It's not really about addiction per-se. It's more about people being ripped off and not knowing what they are buying into. If you're spending €30 a week on coffee, you know exactly what you're getting. If the coffee is not up to scratch in one place, you go somewhere else and so on. And you know the "investment" is not going to solve your financial woes.

With gambling there has to be some level of transparency about the odds. You get that with the lotto and there is some degree of transparency with horse racing too. I said in my last post that competitions for prizes should be regulated as gambling, but what I left out, was "competitions for prizes that cost money to enter". There is the odd radio competition where the show is offered a free prize and it's done on a free entry basis. That's the kind of vibe that these competitions have, but once money is charged to enter, it's a different ball game and should have different rules imo.

I don't really care how much people spend on this rubbish, fools and their money. Just annoyed how this shite breaks up the flow with constant plugging.

most of my workmates now play it. whoever came up with the idea in Goloud deserves a good bonus as the amount of money its making for them is unreal.

I suspect you need to look at the listenership for their stations and some significant percentage of that is playing this regularly. That might give some range estimate of the revenue they are pulling in. Anecdotal, but I was just speaking to a young person (Spin listener) who said she plays it once a week. The advertising of it is so pervasive, you have to assume this is happening. It really should be regulated.

KPMG are there to oversee the Lotto draw. With the sums of money now involved in the 'Cash Machine' , is anyone keeping an eye on what is going on ?

To be fair they said they enter occasionally, not daily, so they could be paying any amount. But it’s their money so does it really matter if they want to enter daily?

I just looked at the UK version of this competition and I noticed one curious thing. It costs £2 to enter by SMS, or else you can enter online for free. I wonder is that to avoid some aspect of regulation by claiming it's a free entry competition. The online entry makes you go through a few annoying captchas, which I presume is to stop automated entries, but they don't want to make it too easy to enter for free either 😋

And needless to say even that option isn't available here.

The wireless group of stations have started a similar giveaway.

It’s called Christmas Cash Stars and is more of a game as you have to identify 3 celebrity voices to get the money.

They're giving away €1,000 to the contestant who can guess one voice, €2,000 for two voices, and a €10,000 for all 3.

Also, €2.50 per text.

Liam Coburn on Q102 makes the call.

Some interesting pieces of information from the terms of the Wireless groups competition:

When an Entrant enters the competition, they will receive a text message that invites them to take part in our 3-for-2 offer, whereby if they enter a second time within the same competition round, they will receive an additional entry at no extra cost.

Entrants can enter a maximum of 5 times throughout each entry period of the competition. We strongly advise against excessive use. (An entry period appears to be one day in the terms – eg 4:15pm Monday to 4pm Tuesday)

If the first random caller doesn’t answer, another random selection will be made up until a caller is contacted and a valid guess is recorded for that entry period. Prizes which haven’t been won will automatically rollover into the next entry period.

The competition runs across the Wireless Ireland network of stations which are Dublin’s FM104 and Q102, Cork’s 96fm and C103, Live 95 in Limerick and LMFM.

The call plays out between 4-5pm each day. Perhaps there’s been an increase in listeners for Bauer at 3pm daily so they’re trying to reclaim that audience at 4pm?

I think this is not right, in a radio channel you txt for 2.5 Euro and you have the chance to win tens of thousands, we have enough gambling problems in this country