There are few betting firms in the modern era that are as well-known as Paddy Power. The Irish bookmaker has made its name by offering daft bets and being involved in odd promotions, earning headlines for doing things such as putting a wax model of Alex Ferguson outside Old Trafford with a sign saying ‘in case of emergency, break glass’.
Though most people that follow sports or have placed a bet at some point or another will have heard of them, not everyone knows exactly who it is that started the company in the first place.
The name is taken from David Power, but there were actually three people responsible for the formation of the company: David Power, Stewart Kenny and John Corcoran. The three independent bookmakers realised that they were at risk of being taken over by the bigger brands towards the end of the 1980s, so they decided to form a merger in order to survive the influx of big-name bookies.
The merger resulted in 40 betting shops coming under one banner, which allowed them to stave off any approaches. Since then, they’ve grown to become one of the biggest bookmakers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The Three Amigos
David Power
It is all but impossible to talk about the people involved in Paddy Power as individuals, such is the extent to which their fates have been intertwined for so many years. In the case of David Power, there is surprisingly little known about him, given the fact that it is his name that the company took on as its moniker after the merger of the three firms. What we do know is that he qualified as a chartered accountant, heading to work for his family company, Richard Power Bookmakers, virtually straight away and getting a grounding in the industry.
Even when Paddy Power was established in 1988, David Power continued to work with Richard Power as an on-course bookmaker, as well as working with private clients to take their wagers. The business had been established in Waterford in 1895, growing to the point that Richard Power decided to open stands at some of the biggest courses in Ireland and England. When David Power began working for the company, he helped to expand it further, working at racecourses and overseeing the running of the brick and mortar shops that they had around Ireland.
Stewart Kenny
Born in Dublin in 1951, Stewart Kenny was a life-long fan of gambling as a pastime. He placed one of his first wagers in 1974, believing that Richard Nixon would resign the Presidency. He created a series of betting shops in Ireland, having trained in the trade in London working for Ladbrokes. Having built up his modest series of betting shops, working with Vincent O’Reilly to create Kenny O’Reilly Bookmakers, the pair were made an offer to sell up to Coral in 1986, which they accepted. They then opened ten more shops of their own over the next four years.
Though Kenny made his living from the world of betting, in his later years he realised the error of his ways. Writing in February of 2021, he accepted blame for what the gambling industry had done, but also offered solutions about how to fix it moving forwards. He resigned from the board of Paddy Power in 2016, citing ‘deep concern’ that bookmakers weren’t doing enough to curb the gambling addiction that so many people were suffering from. Instead, he moved to work in the mental health area, declaring that more regulation of the betting industry was necessary moving forwards.
John Corcoran
Born on the first of December in 1929, more is known about John Corcoran than the other two Paddy Power co-founders. This is largely because he was a successful businessman away from the world of betting, though it will obviously always be his part in the creation of Paddy Power that he’ll be remembered for. Indeed, it was actually Corcoran’s idea to merge the three companies that had 40 shops between them in order to survive the invasion of British bookmakers to Ireland in the 1980s; at least according to how Stewart Kenny remembers it.
Speaking about the matter after Corcoran’s death, Kenny said, “He came up to me outside the old Department of Industry and Commerce building in Kildare Street, and said ‘I’ve got this great idea; we’ll be prepared to get market share, not short-term profits…if we go for market share, and they [the British] go for short-term profits, there can only be one winner.” Thus it was that Paddy Power was created, allowing the company to thrive and grow in an otherwise competitive industry. Having begun life working at greyhound tracks in Enniscorthy, Corcoran worked hard to ensure the success of Paddy Power.
Alongside his bookmaking business, Corcoran formed Green Property, which would go on to become one of Ireland’s largest real estate businesses. According to Kenny, it was his laid-back attitude towards life and business that made him such a success. Speaking on the matter, Kenny said that he ‘took the long view; he would shrug his shoulders and say that sometimes you have good days, and other times bad days’. A lover of fishing, hunting and other country pursuits in his spare time, Corcoran also kept horses, having them trained by Jim Bolger, who said that he ‘loved winning’.
Paddy Power Grows
At the time that Corcoran suggested merging the businesses of himself, Stewart Kenny and David Power, it was Richard Power Bookmakers that was the best-known of the trio in Ireland. As a result, it was felt that it made the most sense to name the new company after Power, with Corcoran suggesting that they would do well to play on the Irishness of the business in the face of aggression from English companies. It was with this thought in mind that Paddy Power was decided upon as the new company’s name, with green being the predominant colour used in branding.
The company had an aggressive expansion strategy in those formative years, opening shops in most of the towns around Ireland. They chose to put the shops in prominent locations, rather than opting for the side streets that had been the typical location for betting shops before then. By choosing to offer novelty markets, the company would regularly appear in the news and in the years that followed its opening, its market share grew from 8% in 1988 to 33% by 2001. In December of 2000, Power Leisure, the parent company, floated on the London Stock Exchange.
The decision to float was made in order to allow the business to expand into the United Kingdom, turning the tables on the companies that had threatened the existence of the bookies a decade or so earlier. By the end of 2005, Paddy Power boasted 150 outlets in Ireland and 45 in the UK, employing more than 1,000 people. Takeovers of companies such as McGranaghan Racing saw it expand even further, so that by the start of 2010 there were 356 shops around Ireland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That year also saw a move into the Australian market with the purchase of Sportsbet.com.au.
The Merger With Betfair
In September of 2015, a merger was agreed between Paddy Power and Betfair, structured in such a way that Paddy Power acquired Betfair. The result of this was that the newly created Paddy Power Betfair was based in Dublin after the merger’s completion in February of 2016.
When trading ended on its first day on the London Stock Exchange, shares in the company were worth £104.90. Analysts spoke highly of the potential of the new company, believing that it offered the chance to take on the more established bookies at the time.
The strong track record of both companies in terms of cash returns was a reason to be celebrated, according to Gavin Kelleher of Goodbody. The enlarged group was, he said, exposed to the ‘right growth hotspots’ that would give it a good market share and to outperform many of its rivals. By creating one of the world’s largest online betting companies, Paddy Power Betfair was able to combine the growth of the world of online gambling with the physical presence of the Paddy Power shops that were in place around the United Kingdom and the island of Ireland.
Later the combined company renamed itself Flutter Entertainment as it went on to acquire a range of brands and also merge with the Stars Group (e.g. Sky Bet & Poker Stars). It is a long way from where it started, although unlike with other betting super groups the brands, Paddy Power especially, have maintained their unique identity.
Paddy Power In The Modern Era
As proof of Paddy Power’s success, the company won the GGA London ‘Betting Shop Operator of the Year’ award in 2020, repeating the trick a year later. In June of 2022, Paddy Power Games launched, with the vertical being brought forward as a replacement of the company’s casino and live casino. The idea was that this would being the image of playing online casino games more in-line with what the United Kingdom Gambling Commission expected from the companies that it gave gambling licences to in order to allow them to have a UK-facing operation.
Interestingly, one of David Power’s relatives still works for the company. Not only that, but his actual name is Paddy Power. The great-grandson of Richard, Paddy joined the company in 1996 when he was 21. Initially he worked as an odd compiler, whilst his brother, Willie, worked with their father at the on-course bookmakers pitches of Richard Power. Having studied Business and German at Dublin City University, he briefly considered becoming a vet before he realised that, like with the rest of his family, his real talent lied in the world of bookmaking.
As his time in the business continued, Paddy Power began to take on different roles, eventually becoming the PR Spokesperson. The brainchild behind many of the company’s most infamous novelty bets, he came up with the idea of allowing bets on the outcome of the Oscar Pistorius trial. He created an ‘Oscar Time’ advert, which imposed Pistorius’ face on an Academy Award statuette alongside the slogan ‘Money Back If He Walks’. It generated the most complaints that had ever been sent to the Advertising Standards Authority, with a British charity going so far as to launch a petition about it.
Speaking about the matter, Power said, “The reason we bet on it was because it was the highest-profile media trial – certainly one of the biggest media stories of the year. Everyone was speculating. I totally understand if people think it’s in bad taste, that’s fine. That’s subjective. You forget there’s real people behind it. There is a line that you don’t cross. You do sometimes go close to that line. With Oscar Pistorius we definitely knew we were on the right side of that line. Some of the edgy stuff we do is dangerous. We like testing boundaries. You do want to get some ‘Jaysus, how did they get away with that’ reaction’.”
Paddy Power the person was simply following in the footsteps of those that came before him at Paddy Power the company. Indeed, Richard Power’s move into bookmaking in the first place came about when he bumped into his boss at a racecourse and just started shouting out the odds and taking bets. Richard passed the business to his son Paddy, but when he died it was left in the hands of his wife and 16-year-old son David. What followed was work to make it into one of the biggest companies in the world, with Paddy Power being a part of that journey.
At the time of writing, Paddy Power still works for Paddy Power, making decisions that keep the company in the limelight and ensuring that punters still place bets with it. A father of four himself, it is unclear whether he’d encourage any of his children to follow him into the family business. He said, “They’ll make their own decisions when they get much bigger. I’d like them to be good at maths, I think maths is very important. The jobs that are hard to fill are very maths-based.” The future, then, might still be in the hands of the Powers.