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NetPlay TV rejigs PlayMonday contract after charity concerns

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 1 Jun 2007

The new owners of the Monday lottery were forced to backtrack on the pricing structure for the relaunched game a fortnight after sending out new contracts to charities, after some raised concerns about how they would sell it to their supporters.

NetPlay TV invited the existing charity partners of the lottery to a meeting on 11 May to present its plans to relaunch PlayMonday on 11 June as a fixed odds game with a potential jackpot of £10m.

A number of charities raised concerns at the meeting about the pricing structure of the new game and the proportion of each £1 ticket going to charity. When original operators Chariot launched Monday last May, 30p of each ticket went to charity; but under NetPlay’s new fixed odds game, charity payment was based on a twotier system depending on where the player had found out about the game. If a player bought a ticket prompted by the charity’s own marketing or through its bespoke PlayMonday website, that charity would receive 20p; but if the player came through the PlayMonday homepage the charity would receive 10p.

After charities questioned the responsibility this placed on them to do their own marketing of the game and how they would explain it to their supporters, NetPlay TV’s chief executive Martin Higginson agreed to change the contract so that charities would receive a 20p fee from each £1 ticket.

Higginson also agreed to remove an exclusivity clause, described by one charity representative as “woolly”, which meant charities could not be involved in more than one charity lottery at a time. A number of charities are still considering Hope, an alternative to PlayMonday run by former Chariot managing director Philip Evans, which 36 charities have so far expressed an interest in joining.

Juliette Elam, corporate partnerships manager at Breast Cancer Campaign, was pleased with NetPlay’s flexibility. “They’ve accepted that they need to consult the charities to make it work.”

However, Imran Kali, a legal advisor at Macmillan Cancer Support, which is still considering the new contract, raised questions about NetPlay’s organisation. “They are flexible, that is good; that they are negotiating at a the time when they are meant to be making a presentation, that’s slightly alarming.”

Higginson was also forced to apologise after 11 charities including Mencap and Macmillan were not invited to the meeting because SMI, the company currently managing Monday on behalf of the participating charities, informed NetPlay TV they were no longer interested in taking part. “If we hadn’t contacted you, we apologise. We were told by SMI not to contact some of them when in reality they wanted to be contacted.” When the game moves from a society lottery to a fixed-odds game in June 2007, SMI’s involvement with the game will terminate.

NetPlay’s plans for PlayMonday as a fixed-odds game mean it will be similar to the National Lottery, with a £10m jackpot if players can match six balls plus the bonus. There will also be two other games running beside it: ‘Play 3’ and ‘Play 4’, where players can win £10,000 and £50,000 respectively for matching all the balls.

Although NetPlay TV said a “handful” of charities had already signed up to the new contract, most were still considering the new proposals while some, including WWF, British Red Cross and Fairbridge, have already withdrawn from the game.

Melinda Carey-Hock, head of fundraising at disability charity Enham, questioned how cost-effective lotteries could be to attract new donors for charities: “We recognise that we’re not going to engage a lot of our existing supporter database. We are looking to recruit and engage a younger generation and to find the most cost-effective ways of recruiting them. We have to do the sums.”
 

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Who's Who: Gemma Ware