Dunshaughlin GAA joined www.locallotto.ie in January 2008. Dunshaughlin are a leading Senior Football Club in County Meath with 130 adult members including players. The club has traditional lotto and is also online.
Why did we join Local Lotto? – Very simple, to raise more money.
Our chairman Jim Smith has great vision and recognizes that the club needed to raise more money from its lotto as it is the clubs main source of income. It is impossible for the club to sell paper tickets to all its supporters as the majority of ‘paper ticket’ sales are carried out in the local pubs.
With the smoking ban, economic downturn there are less people available to buy tickets in pubs while we have also had members who have had to leave the country to find employment due to the recession.
To quote Jim ‘Everyone is online at work and at home. They are looking at email, doing their banking online, while the younger people are on the Bebo or the Facebook so we as a club need an online presence to raise funds’. The internet is so convenient for our supporters especially the ‘club players’, who like in most clubs were harder to reach and I know what I am talking about as I set up the Lotto in the club. In fact at least 90% of our club players are now online.’
We also knew that the computer would not sell tickets to people so we set up a Sales Team.
Our Online Lotto Sales Team has 2 sales orientated people who ask people who are not purchasers of ‘paper tickets’ to play on line.
Dunshaughlin’s target this year is to raise over € 10,000 online.
January 2010 saw sales of € 2,100 so we are well on our way to exceeding our target while also connecting with our members in the village and all over Ireland and the world.
For each club meeting we print off a report which shows our sales and each month money raised online is transferred to the club bank account by Locallotto.ie. All our key club personnel have access to the accounting system.
The club is in the process of developing new playing pitches and a new clubhouse which will help grow the club. The reporting system on Locallotto.ie will allow us to confidently show our Bank we have a regular income stream and that we will be capable of meeting repayments. With the Internet growing every year our online lotto sales will continue to rise.
In fact as I was writing this article two former players replayed their tickets.
One lives in Clontarf, Co. Dublin and the other lives in Naas, Co. Kildare. Both are extremely loyal clubmen and without the Internet would lose touch with the club, they enjoy the weekly lotto results email which arrives in their inbox with lotto results and club news. The former stalwart from Naas also signed up for his club membership online – we introduced the membership online this year and over 40 people have paid online in 6 weeks collecting over €1,000 in membership. We even have people playing the clubs lotto online from as far away as Cambridge, England. That would have been unthinkable 2 years ago.
Online Lotto is the future. We are making sure our teams will have the best opportunity for success in the future.
Dunshaughlin GAA Secretary 2010 and Online Lotto Coordinator