I was returning through Stansted Airport from one of my trips to the UK yesterday. My eye was caught by an Aston Martin on a stand advertising the "Win a Supercar" competition run by Best of the Best. I knew I only had £10 in my wallet, so I succumbed to temptation and paid £8 to enter the fortnightly draw, having chosen an Audi RS6 Avant as my preferred prize (the entry fee varies depending on what you hanker after, but all the tickets in a given fortnight go into the same draw). It has to involve skill, so it's a "Spot the ball" type competition. I've never been remotely near where the ball actually is when I used to occasionally have a bash alongside the pools, but you never know!! I also paid the supplementary £1 to win £10,000 cash. That'll help me spec in a few extras, or simply pay the fuel bills ;-)
All I need to do now is spend the next couple of weeks deciding on colour (might have to be red) and whether LHD or RHD (we live in Austria, currently running our old RHD Saab).
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I've often wondered how many tickets they sell. Given theses type of draws have been around for a good few years now then they obviously sell enough to cover the car and make a few quid.
Odds must be far better than the lottery
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>> I've often wondered how many tickets they sell. Given theses type of draws have been
>> around for a good few years now then they obviously sell enough to cover the
>> car and make a few quid.
>>
I was told that there are usually around 5-8,000 in each draw. But remember it's not a game of chance as such, you have to be the nearest to where the ball actually was as judged by an independent referee, i.e. they don't just go back to the original picture before the ball was removed. The centre of the ball is located to an x and y coordinate of 3 digits.
>> Odds must be far better than the lottery
>>
Precisely! So I thought it was worth a punt on the spur of the moment.
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There always seem something dogy about those draws. If you ask they will tell you it s not a raffle but they won't actually tell you how it works unless you buy a ticket. When I walked away from the salesman he offered me £2 off the ticket price which seems unfair on the punters who paid the full price. I didn't buy a ticket.
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I doubt there is a draw or a prize but of load of mugs.
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Many years ago a dutch colleague of mine won a Jag from Glasgow Airport (I think it was Glasgow, I was working in Ayr).
There didn't seem to be a catch, other than the odds against actually winning.
And he certainly got his car.
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It's definitely genuine. I don't believe I'm a mug, but feel free to prove otherwise :-)
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I'm sure the competitions are genuine in as far as someone wins the car, its just that I get the impression the people who run these things are none too keen to let you know exactly the mechanism of the draw, what the odds are of winning and how much they cream off in profits.
The best value for money in betting, i.e the lowest amount of deductions and the best odds of winning are at the bookies. If you want the maximum chance of winning a large sum of money place an accumulator on five horses every week. Far better value than the lottery.
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>> The best value for money in betting, i.e the lowest amount of deductions and the
>> best odds of winning are at the bookies. If you want the maximum chance of
>> winning a large sum of money place an accumulator on five horses every week. Far
>> better value than the lottery.
>>
+1 to that, £5.50 buys a good afternoon's entertainment shouting at the TV with the chance of a very healthy return if you get lucky.
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>> There always seem something dogy about those draws. If you ask they will tell you
>> it s not a raffle but they won't actually tell you how it works unless
>> you buy a ticket. When I walked away from the salesman he offered me £2
>> off the ticket price which seems unfair on the punters who paid the full price.
>> I didn't buy a ticket.
>>
And illegal.
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Ii've never seen anything particularly dodgy about the airport competitions, though they're clearly designed not to be lotteries so they remain outside the scope of the Gambling Act. It's also always very clear that they are of the 'spot the ball' type skill based game, which I don't play because I'm generally rubbish at them!
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the safer bet is to spend the money on gin the in the duty free shop.....
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>> the safer bet is to spend the money on gin the in the duty free
>> shop.....
>>
£9 doesn't buy much gin in the duty free shop these days, the prices are jaw-droppingly ludicrous compared to the high street. For family reasons I've been travelling backwards and forwards between the UK and Austria using various airports, and only once have I seen spirits at a sensible price that made me buy some - around £10-12 for a litre of Irish whiskey. There's also the hassle of dragging it around when you are travelling by train/bus with several changes. Can't be bothered. I can get a bottle of cooking whisky for 7.49 euros in countless supermarkets here in Austria, with blended malt at €9.95 :-)
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Easy Jet on board, 1 litre Gordons, 10 quid.
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www.botb.com/about/faqs.aspx
This is the company I've seen at Manchester Airport.
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Well no mention of the odds or how much is returned in prize money. I've sent them an email to ask that question. I'll post the reply (if any).
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I'm not sure how you'd calculate the odds of a skills based game, though presumably if no one gets the exact position the one whose guess (is guessing a skill...) is nearest wins? Looking at their website there are two draws per month for the supercar competition, so presumably the odds vary depending on how many tickets have been sold by then?
They are a public company, and their accounts are available on their website:
www.botb.com/assets/aboutus/investor_relations/pdfs/161677_Best_of_the_Best_Annual_Report_CL.pdf
Certainly not making huge profits, and the Directors aren't raking it in either though of course their options will be worth something... Plenty of cash though. Looks like the bulk of their running costs are staff, presumably selling the tickets!
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>> Certainly not making huge profits, and the Directors aren't raking it in either though of
>> course their options will be worth something... Plenty of cash though. Looks like the bulk
>> of their running costs are staff, presumably selling the tickets!
>>
On Commission I guess.
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It's a game of skill where nobody has the skill needed to predict the results i.e predicting the judges opinion of where the ball is. Its effectively a lottery. Your guess has the same chance as mine.
Would be interested to know how many tickets are sold each month. Is there always a draw regardless of number of tickets sold? Do they have a draw if the the tickets sales do not exceed the value of the car?
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The response
"Thank you for your email; as a standard procedure, we do not publish or release to customers the number of tickets sold for each competitions. This is because the games are games of skill (not chance) and we are required to keep them this way by law. The ticket numbers do vary between Competitions depending in demand. The so called 'odds' of the competition are based on the level of skill of the entrant as well as the number of tickets. As you may have noticed, we vary the ticket prices and the length of time that the competitions run for, so as to keep a fair balance on the number of entrants. We look to make a small profit on each competition, but we also risk (as sometimes happens) that we do not sell enough tickets to cover our costs - as we guarantee to give away the prize irrespective of how many tickets we have sold. "
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>> www.botb.com/about/faqs.aspx
>>
>> This is the company I've seen at Manchester Airport.
>>
Yep, same one operating at Stansted.
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>> Easy Jet on board, 1 litre Gordons, 10 quid.
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Only if you buy two, a single bottle is now £12. I think it went up a couple of months ago. Easyjet is currently my carrier of choice, but they haven't got round to putting the "By Appointment" signs up yet ;-) Much nicer people than Ryanair.
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EJ only carry the booze on certain routes. Thought it might have been on my Geneva flight last week being out of the EU but no such luck. Cabin crew didn't even know which routes it was available on but said it wasn't many
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>> EJ only carry the booze on certain routes. Thought it might have been on my
>> Geneva flight last week being out of the EU but no such luck. Cabin crew
>> didn't even know which routes it was available on but said it wasn't many
>>
Only routes outside the EU (Switzerland, Egypt, Norway etc).
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got mine on the flight to morocco.
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>> >> Easy Jet on board, 1 litre Gordons, 10 quid.
>> >>
>> Only if you buy two, a single bottle is now £12. I think it went
>> up a couple of months ago. Easyjet is currently my carrier of choice, but they
>> haven't got round to putting the "By Appointment" signs up yet ;-) Much nicer people
>> than Ryanair.
I hate the plastic bottles tho, we bought two and I decant them into an empty 1ltre Bombay Saphire glass bottle. I think I got that in Gib.
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Winning a supercar at the airport - mikeyb
