Paddy Power’s Wonder Wheel is a free to play promotional game which anyone with an account can play (those who have had their accounts limited may be excluded), with the chance to win real cash prizes.
The prizes are only small, but they are varied, so it’s not impossible for a small Wonder Wheel prize to turn into a significantly larger chunk of withdrawable cash if your luck is in.
The game can be played once per day, so serves as an incentive for players to visit the site frequently, and also means that a losing spin isn’t exactly disappointing as you can try again tomorrow.
A lot of online bookies have these sorts of free promotions in place these days, but the Wonder Wheel is arguably one of the more interesting to play thanks to the design and the way it plays out, which will be covered in more detail shortly.
What’s more, being a Paddy Power product, the Wonder Wheel is also delivered with a dose of cheeky humour that actually got the bookie in trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority when they advertised it on TV.
How the Wonder Wheel Works
You can find a link to the Wonder Wheel above the A-Z sports list on Paddy Power’s website, or alternatively, if you see them advertising it on the site anywhere you can click the advert.
This takes you to the game, where you will see the wheel itself and all of the potential prizes listed underneath along with a ‘Spin’ button.
Well believe it or not, you have to click that spin button and the game will start.
The Wonder Wheel has 3 rings each broken up into segments with icons on them. These icons are are win icons, no win icon, or arrow icons.
A yellow box indicates the important area, and whatever icon lands inside there is the one that counts for your game; this could be a straight win, a straight lose, or an arrow that bumps you up to the next ring of the wheel or down to the one before.
You can win on any ring but there is more chance of losing on the first ring and the number and quality of prizes increase as you progress to the second and third rings.
You might get an immediate result or you might go up and down on the Wonder Wheel for a few spins before getting an eventual result, but when you do, you either lose, or your prize is credited to your account instantly and is ready to use.
If you do win something, you will need to opt in/accept the prize before going on to use it, and that is as simple as clicking the button that will look like the one in this image on the right.
After a win you will be automatically redirected back to the page that shows this option, so the best thing is to use your prize right away if you win one. If you get held up for any reason though, you can just head back to the Wonder Wheel page and the option will be waiting for you, provided you haven’t let the prize expire of course.
Wonder Wheel Prizes
The reason you would play this game at all, is for the prizes right – so what are they?
Well the top prize is £100 in cash, so that would be nice, but of course you are much more likely to win one of the smaller prizes, and these are spread across Paddy Power’s sports book and casino as you can see:
The prizes you get may be small, but as this is a daily game there is a lot of value over the long term if you are consistent with it.
For example, if you won 5 free spins worth 10p every day for a set period of time, it would look like this:
| Days | # Spins | Cash Value |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | 35 | £3.50 |
| 30 | 150 | £15.00 |
| 365 | 1,825 | £182.50 |
Now obviously, the chances of you winning a prize every single day for a year are not high, and the chances of that prize being the same every day is almost non-existent, but the hit frequency isn’t bad here so seven wins on the trot isn’t unthinkable.
The above therefore gives a good indication of the potential long term value that Paddy’s Wonder Wheel offers.
Where applicable, the prizes comes with 1x wagering, which is essentially the same as saying no wagering, because once you have used the spin/scratch card/bonus the conditions have been met, but the time limit on the prizes is very short, so use them straight away:
- Scratch cards – 24 hours
- Free spins – 2 hours
- Games Bonuses – 24 hours
- Free bets – 7 days
If you win cash, that is immediately credited to your account and you can do what you like with it, as it is treated the same as a cash deposit from your bank.
The games you can use the prizes on are usually restricted to two (sometimes three) different titles, so there’s not any real choice within them, but the free bets can be used on any market so long as the odds are 1.5 or higher.
Wonder Wheel Television Commercial Controversy
In true Paddy Power fashion, they got into trouble when they launched the Wonder Wheel product, because of the humour in the adverts.
There were a couple of them, but the one that got the most complaints featured a man going to his girlfriend’s parents house for tea. He is playing the Wonder Wheel game on his phone and not paying attention when his girlfriend asks:
“Do you think i’ll end up looking like my Mum?”
He replies, rather too enthusiastically:
“I hope so”
Before realising that he has indirectly admitted to fancying his girlfriend’s Mum. Cue awkward silence from the parents and outrage from the girlfriend.
The issue that a whopping 3 people took with the advert was that the man is “so distracted by gambling that he made an inappropriate remark”, and so the ASA banned it stating that the commercial “encouraged repetitive gambling” because it “portrayed gambling as taking priority in life, over family”.
Paddy Power, having no doubt spent considerable amounts of money on the ads, accepted the decision, but simply re-released the ads with the game on the phone being replaced with a non-gambling related CGI alternative image.
Another advert saw a woman who was ordering coffee embarrass herself.
She wins on the Wonder Wheel and says “Little beauty”, after which the coffee barista asks her name. Thinking the barista is coming onto her because of her ‘little beauty’ remark, the woman says “No no, you’ve got the wrong idea, I already have a girlfriend.”
The barista raises a pen and a coffee cup before replying, “No, you’ve got the wrong idea. It’s for the coffee.”
Cringe.
