BetHeads
← The work
Concept 02

A cow, a roulette grid and a webcam

How Intertops got the world talking at Christmas 2001, with a game of chance decided by a cow. Long before BetHeads, all three of us had a hand in it.

Client
Intertops
Team
Paul Cullen · Simon Noble · Ian Sherrington
Launched
Christmas 2001
Plate 01 · The fieldMoolette · live by webcam
A cow standing on a giant roulette grid painted on a field, with intertops.com banners either side
Fig. 1The table. Numbers 1 to 36, painted on grass, and one very important cow.
Game
Moolette
Table
A field in Austria
Croupier
A cow

♥The challenge

Introduce an online sportsbook to the world, in the early days of online gaming, when most people had never placed a bet on the internet.

How do you capture the world’s imagination in the early days of online gaming?

♠The idea

Moolette. Take cow pat bingo, the old country fair fundraiser, and cross it with roulette. Paint a roulette grid on a field, stand a cow on it, stream it live by webcam and let people bet in real time on where the cow would leave its mark.

♦How it worked

  • The field. A farm near Intertops’ Austrian headquarters, its location kept secret, divided into a numbered grid painted to show up on camera.
  • The stream. A webcam on the field, with a high-speed connection installed just for the game.
  • The bets. Placed live through a purpose-built website, with Ian Sherrington on the technical side.
  • The rules. Only one kind of deposit counted.
Plate 02 · On locationMoolette · the croupier
The Moolette grid from above, with the cow on it
Fig. 2The full table, from above.
A man in a black suit and yellow wellies with a pitchfork, beside the cow on the grid
Fig. 3The croupier, in a suit and wellies.
Location
Secret
Dress code
Wellies
Figures
2

♣What happened

The Sun and the News of the World ran the story in full during a quiet news week at Christmas, and it went on to worldwide press and US television coverage.

The cows took their time, as cows do. By then the publicity had done its job, and Intertops was a name people knew.

Ian Sherrington tells the full story ↗
Plate 03 · The filmMoolette · 2001
Watch on YouTube ↗
Title
Moolette
Client
Intertops
Year
2001

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