After 7 years, it has been decided to call time on the City Lotto.

While in 2006 the Lotto funded the Under-age section of the club to the tune of 20,000 Euro the sales in 2007, especially since the Jackpot was last won in March, have been at such low level that continuing with the draw had become unsustainable.

Various attempts have been made over the years to increase sales , e.g. the addition of the Bonus draw; sales through the on-line shop and more recently a link up with Locallotto.ie but sales remained stubbornly low. The sales on-line were especially disappointing with a figure of fewer than 1% of registered Forum members taking up this option.

It has therefore been decided that the best option at this point is to call a halt, recharge the batteries and explore alternative methods of fundraising, starting with a clean sheet.

Over the years many friends have been made at various locations at which the Lotto draws were held throughout the City and County.

We would like to express our gratitude to all who helped make the Lotto a success while it lasted - publicans, volunteers and of course our loyal customers.

I am left now with 2 problems :

1. What the **** do I now do on Monday nights - and no, watching the Premiersh1t on T.V. is NOT an option.

2. As it is no longer needed, we have for sale a used Lotto machine, in perfect working order. As a guide, a new one costs approx. 600 Euro. If any one knows of a club or organisation looking for such a machine, send me a P.M.


CITY LOTTO COMMITTEE.

First off, fair play for the effort over the years and the time you've given up to run City Lotto.

I used the online service alright as it was more convenient for me.

Just one small point. There may be approx 4500 forum mebers here, but each day approx only 300-350 of them log on. These are individual users. What is the ratio of City Lotto players to 300/350 forum users? Realistically this is the number of Cork City supporters each day who use the internet. Some of these may already be players through the other options available. There is this myth out there that 1000's of Cork City fans use the internet. They don't, sure we have more forum members that we have fans!!

You may have 4500 registered members but you never get anywhere near that number, due to a few reasons:

1) how many people sign up, make a post to find out about something and never return again? I do it quite alot on other forums.
2) How many members of the forum are supporters of other clubs in the eircom League, Sunderland fans, Reading fans and fans of any other clubs who've had a connection with Cork/Cork City over the past number of years?
3) A huge about of members would be supporters of clubs we've played in Europe down the years? Malmo, NEC, Nantes, Ekranas, Djurgarden, Slavia Prague, Red Star, Apollon, Valur, Hammarby and even some Utrecht supporters! These people, in the majority of cases are unlikely to use this forum after we play them....just like many CCFC fans signed up to their forums and would never use it again!

A recent addition to the forum (on the forum home page) lists out the number of people who have logged on in any one day. Its an accurate indication of the number of fans Cork City have who use the internet. I'd imagine most CCFC internet users would be aware of CCFCForum.com

I would reckon that the offical website would get a similiar number of individual visitors to this website.

Just one further point about the next potential fundraisers/promotions. CCFC badly needs an emailing list / SMS list of as many supporters as possible to keep them informed of any online ways of doing things. Even though not all 4500 members here visit the website each day, I still have the features available to email or PM every single member to remind them of any additions/changes to the website. This is an excellent feature and CCFC needs a database like this. Take the clubs Online Shop for example. New content is added to that and some people may not even know about it. However if the club sent an email to every shop member when new stuff is added to the shop then I guarantee sales would improve.

I appreciate that the number of registered users does overstate the " active" membership of the forum, for the reasons you mention, and that also quite a few members are young, but you will appreciate that getting less than 20 subscribers from the on-line options over 18 months was disappointing. I just mentioned the poor uptake on-line as a symptom of the problems with poor sales and not as a criticism - hope it didn't come across as criticism.

With regard to using e-mail as a means of providing information to fans, I know that Adrian has been working on this. The club has all the e-mail addresses of those who subscribed to the on line lotto as well as those who made purchaces through the on line shop. Also at at least one recent home game flyers were handed out to the fans asking them to supply e-mail addresses if they wanted to be kept informed of promotions, new merchandise etc. by e-mail. I'm not sure if SMS was included as an option on the form circulated, but I think it was.

One thing to note is that many companies block access to gambling sites, which includes lotto. So the National Lottery is blocked for example and when opening the City website home page, the Lotto section is blocked.
It may not have affected many people, but I'm sure some.
It put me off going on to the city website as I'm not sure how these accesses are tracked.

Yeah Adrian is doing some excellent work in fairness to him. This facility, when up and running, will be of huge benefit.


Good point, I didn't really think of that.

In fairness as Steve mentioned, 20 subscribers was poor...especially at a time when people use the internet so much.

Fair play again Steve (and others) for the effort down the years.

Fair play to all involved, unbelieveable work by those who were involved it has to be said. The youth system within the club will really suffer now as a result. This will be a serious kick in the teeth for all involved.

I subcribed for the year in the club shop and thought it was a great way of doing it. My number never came up but thats the luck of the draw i suppose

Like anything you do in fund raising, it takes alot of hard work and it is always left to a core few over time. Its sad to see it pan out that way but thats just it.


Any update on how the lotto did over the years? Who sold the hightest amount of tickets in any one week? Which bar sold the highest amount of tickets on a regular basis? What was the most amount of tickets sold in any one week? How many jackpots were won since the start? How much money was won over all?

You're right, it is sh1t

It would be interesting to find out how many people from this form go to all home games when they can .