Criticism
Paddy Power has drawn criticism in the past for offering controversial markets such as odds on the first species to be driven to extinction by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; on an assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama; and on the potential extinction of the polar bear.
Paddy Power's advertising campaigns have also been criticised; one showed sight-impaired footballers kicking a cat, for which the Advertising Standards Authority received 400 complaints; another involved Imogen Thomas alongside a tagline using a double-entendre.
Paddy Power has also been criticised for not paying out on bets with large odds. In 2009 when Shane Lowry won the Irish Open Paddy Power stated that it would not pay out on the 3000/1 odds which had initially been offered and instead reached 'an arrangement' with those involved.
Paddy Power also received hundreds of complaints in February 2012 when the company released an advertising campaign to spot "the stallions from the mares" by placing transgender women in the crowds at the Cheltenham Festival. The ASA are currently investigating the advert, which was subsequently pulled off the UK airwaves. The following month, Paddy Power released a controversial YouTube advert depicting a middle-aged man shooting tranquiliser darts at chavs at a horse racing ground and featuring a tagline stating that people can "enjoy a chav-free Cheltenham". This was inspired by a comment from a user on Paddy Power's Facebook page stating, "Hope the chavs don't ruin Cheltenham like they did Ascot", referring to a brawl on Ladies' Day 2011.
Further criticism was aimed at the Irish firm in March 2012 when, in the build up to the Cheltenham Festival, they added a 'jockey' to the famous hill carving of a white horse in Uffington, Oxfordshire.
On the 13th of June 2012, during a UEFA Euro 2012 match between Denmark and Portugal, Danish forward Nicklas Bendtner celebrated his second goal by lowering his shorts and lifting his shirt to reveal a pair of Paddy Power underpants, to the disgust of the national team's sponsor Ladbrokes and tournament organisers UEFA. Bendtner was fined €100,000 by UEFA and banned for one game, he later described his actions as being regrettable and not premeditated. Paddy Power paid the €100,000 fine on Bendtner's behalf and gave away thousands of replica underwear to fans of their Facebook page.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)