Chariot sells monday online charity lottery
Howard Lake | 18 January 2007 | News
Chariot, the company which set up ‘monday’, the online charities lottery which launched in 2006, has sold the game to an interactive TV gaming company for £140,500 in cash. The game will continue to operate as before, raising funds for its 70 charity partners, but will be run by NetPlay TV.
NetPlay TV will acquire the intellectual property rights to monday together with the entire player database. In return NetPlay TV will, with immediate effect, take responsibility for the operation and operating costs of monday and receive monday’s revenues, reportedly around £50,000 a week.
Chariot has agreed to help NetPlay TV with the transition for about four weeks.
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Just two days before the announcement, Chariot had said that it would be forced to close the lottery if it did not find a buyer for its assets.
NetPlay TV, formerly Stream Group plc, plans to apply its TV production skills to monday to produce a live, interactive TV lottery show which will “give players an enhanced experience.” Last year it acquired Vegas 247 Limited, a TV production company that produces the interactive TV game “Live Roulette” on Sky. It believes that linking the flexibility of the Internet with the traditional TV broadcast will “add further trust and credibility to the monday game.”
Chariot itself, by disposing of all of its trading business activities, will become an investment company, and remains floated on AIM. However, the Board currently anticipates that Chariot will try to find a business – not necessarily a lottery operation, to reverse into it.
Peter Jones, the Chairman of Chariot, commented: “Despite our best efforts we have unfortunately been unable to secure an independent future for the monday lottery. Nevertheless, we are delighted that the monday game will continue under the new ownership of NetPlay TV. Whilst it is disappointing that Chariot will no longer operate the lottery, everyone at Chariot is proud of having raised over £1.65 million for the charity partners since May and delighted that this transaction allows the charity partners and players to continue to benefit from monday.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.