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Football pools

In the United Kingdom, the football pools, often referred to as "the pools", is a betting pool based on predicting the outcome of association football matches taking place in the coming week. The pools are typically cheap to enter, and may encourage gamblers to enter several bets.

The traditional and most popular game was the Treble Chance, now branded the Classic Pools game. Players pick 10, 11 or 12 football games from the offered fixtures to finish as a draw, in which each team scores at least one goal. The player with the most accurate predictions wins the top prize, or a share of it if more than one player has these predictions. In addition, there is a special £3,000,000 prize or share of it for correctly predicting the nine score draws (draws of 1-1 or higher) when these are the only score draws on the coupon.[1] Players can win large cash prizes in a variety of other ways, under a points-based scoring system.

Entries were traditionally submitted through the post or via agents, who collected entries throughout a specific area. It is now possible to play online.

Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters were the largest pools companies. Littlewoods was the first company to provide pools, selling them outside Manchester United's Old Trafford ground in 1923. In 1986, a syndicate of players became the first winners of a prize over £1 million.[2] The football pools companies have traditionally had a charitable element, donating over £1.1 billion to sports-related causes.

The pools business declined after the introduction of the National Lottery in 1994. Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters were brought together in 2007 by Sportech under the brand 'The New Football Pools', now known as 'The Football Pools'. They offer other small stake, high prize games such as Premier 10 and Jackpot 12. In 2017 The Football Pools was sold to OpCapita, a private equity company, for £83 million.[3]

In the United Kingdom

Origins

Competitions for predicting the results of football matches are older than the football league itself. The Cricket and Football Field newspaper, in its edition of 10 September 1887, offered a prize of one guinea to "the Competitor who predicts the results" of four football matches to be played the following Saturday. Readers were invited to cut out and fill in a coupon printed in the newspaper, which had to be sent to the newspaper's offices by the Friday before the matches. If more than one "couponnier" predicted all four exact scores correctly, the prize would be shared between them. There was no charge for entry beyond postage; in fact readers were allowed to submit several coupons together, presumably in order to encourage them to purchase several copies of the newspaper.[4] By 1910, The Umpire was offering a first prize of £300 for predicting six results.[5]

In October 1922, John Moores, Colin Askham and Bill Hughes heard about John Jervis Barnard, a Birmingham man who had devised a 'football pool', where punters would bet on the outcome of football matches.[6][7] The payouts to winners came from the 'pool' of money that was bet, less 10 per cent to cover "management costs". It had not been particularly successful and Barnard was struggling to make a profit. Hughes obtained one of Barnard's pools coupons; the three friends decided they could do it better and, on 1 February 1923, launched the Littlewood Football Pool (as it was originally known). A small office in Liverpool was rented and the first 4,000 coupons were distributed outside Manchester United's Old Trafford ground before one Saturday match that winter.[8] Moores handed the coupons out himself, helped by some young boys eager to earn a few pennies.

It was not an instant success, as just 35 coupons were returned. With bets totalling £4 7s 6d (£4.37½), the 10 per cent deducted did not cover the three men's expenses. They decided to print 10,000 coupons, and took them to Hull, where they were handed out before a big game. This time, only one coupon was returned. Midway through the 1924–25 football season the scheme was still losing money. The three young men had already invested £200 each, with no imminent prospect of things improving. Hughes suggested they cut their losses and forget the whole thing and Askham agreed. They expected Moores to concur, but instead he offered to return the £200 they had each invested in return for their shares, and they accepted. By 1930, Moores had become a millionaire from the competition.[7]

In April 1929, Moores was prosecuted under the Ready Money Football Betting Act 1920. Following a court appearance, he was convicted. However, as his company never accepted cash, only postal orders that were cashed after the football results and the winning payout had been confirmed, his appeal was upheld.[citation needed]

Growth

Vernons' Pools was founded in 1925, also in Liverpool, and Zetters was founded 1933 in London. In 1934, the Football Pool Promoters' Association was formed: besides Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters, its members were the other large pools companies including Cope's Pools (based in London), W.S. Murphy (Edinburgh) and Western Pools (Newport).[9] A report by the Royal Commission at the time suggested that the football pools should be prohibited; the pools companies asked their customers to write to their Member of Parliament, which led to the proposals being withdrawn.[10] The 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act was passed on 27 March 1934 which included restrictions of pool betting. The football pools did not fall under gambling legislation (specifically the Betting and Gaming Act 1960 and its predecessors) because they claimed to be competitions of skill, rather than chance; however, their rules typically stated that all transactions were "binding in honour only". Typically, between one-quarter and half of the entry fees taken would be returned to the players as prizes.

Pools War

In 1936, revenue from the 28 pools companies[11] had reached almost £30 million per year,[5] and the pools accounted for 4 million out of 6 million postal packets sent in the UK.[11] The English Football League was opposed to the betting and decided to withhold publication of their fixture lists in an attempt to thwart the pools companies' ability to print their coupons: games involving long journeys were announced on Thursday evening and others on Friday evening. The pools companies retaliated by printing coupons with just the home sides,[10] then managed to obtain unofficial leaks of the fixtures and gave customers longer to get their coupons in. The "Pools War" ended on 9 March 1936 after two weekends where the fixture lists were not published early.[5] A further attempt to ban the pools was proposed in Parliament at a similar time by R.J. Russell but the bill was defeated on 3 April 1936 by 287 votes to 24.[10]

Barnard continued to run his competition until 1938, when he sold to Cope's Pools of London.[7] Other pools companies included Brittens (founded 1946 in Leicester), Empire (based in Blackpool) and Sherman's Pools of Cardiff, which was absorbed by Littlewoods in 1961.[12]

Dundee United set up a pools competition in 1956 to help fund ground improvements at Tannadice Park.[5]

War years

During World War II, the Post Office refused to deliver the large number of coupons as they were not considered essential, so a Unity Pool organisation was created for the seven largest pools companies to produce joint coupons.[10][13]

Treble Chance

The Treble Chance game was inaugurated in 1946. Players were given a list of football matches set to take place over the coming week and attempted to pick a line of eight of them, whose results would be worth the most points by the scoring scheme; traditionally by crossing specific boxes on a printed coupon. A proportion of the players' combined entry fees was distributed as prizes among those whose entries achieved the highest scores. Prior to this the Penny Points and Penny Results were the most popular games. The Treble Chance offered a potential large jackpot at a time when no other form of gambling in the United Kingdom did. Some pools offered additional ways to win, based on scores of football matches at half-time, or football matches in which a particular number of goals were scored.

By 1947, pools revenue had increased to £70 million a year, with over 90% being spent with Littlewoods, Vernon's, Sherman's and Cope's. It accounted for almost 15 million postal packets each week through the post office.[13] By the 1950s, 100,000 people were working in the industry.[5]

Agreement with the Football League

In July 1959, the High Court of Justice ruled that the Football League owned the copyright to their fixture lists and this led to a 10-year agreement between the pools companies and the English and Scottish Football Leagues, whereby the pools companies would pay the leagues 0.5% of the stakes received (or a minimum of £245,000 per year).[5][10]

During the 1972-73 season, the deal between the Football League and the pools companies was extended for 13 years worth £23 million.[14]

Off-season

With professional football not being played in the United Kingdom during the summer, Zetters introduced Australian pools, based on games played in Australia.[15]

Mechanics

Entries

Entries were traditionally made by post, or via agents or collectors who received a percentage (usually 12.5%) of the money as a fee. Main collectors, who appointed the agents, delivered the forms and payments to a regional office, which were then dispatched to the companies' central offices. Legally the football pools collectors were agents of the entrants, not the pools company. Business for pools collectors was sustained by periodic canvassing, where company agents knocked on doors in an area of a town or housing estate. Many large factories had at least one employee, who as a sideline, collected coupons from fellow workers.

However, many players were unaware that British law left them at the mercy of unscrupulous collectors who took their money but did not submit the coupons. This was because the Gaming Act 1845 made all forms of gambling a "debt of honour" which meant that any dispute about winnings was exempt from legal redress in a court of law. In 1995, a syndicate lost £2.3million when their collector stole their money and did not hand in their coupon. The group wanted to sue the Pools company but it made it clear it did not employ collectors, they were the punters' agents.[16] The "debt of honour" exemption to taking legal action over unpaid winnings was eventually repealed in the Gambling Act 2005.[17]

A variety of football pools games are now played on the Internet. These include the classic pools game that traditionally includes a large number of fixtures, spanning the weekend. This is the same as the old Treble Chance which has been renamed and rebranded under new ownership. New pools game variants include Jackpot 12, Premier 10 and Soccer 6; these are all games in which the player must correctly predict home win, draw or away win for 12, 10 and six (mainly Premier League) football matches.

These new pool games all offer large estimated pool sizes with low stakes; it is possible for people to win tens of thousands of pounds, staking as little as 50p.

Scoring

Scoring schemes have varied over the years. The current Classic Pools game, based on the old Treble Chance game, uses a scoring scheme which awards three points to score draws (matches where both team scored the same, strictly positive, number of goals), two points to no-score draws (matches where neither team scored a goal) and one point to both home wins (matches where the home team scored more goals than the away team) and away wins (matches where the away team scored more goals than the home team). The most famous historical scoring scheme differentiated between home wins and away wins, awarding one-and-a-half points for games resulting in away wins. A scoring scheme used for only one year, split score draws into two categories, awarding three points only for matches ending 1–1 and two and a half points for higher-scoring score draws.

The total score of each line would be calculated, up to a maximum of 24 points. The highest scoring line achieved by any player in that particular week's competition would be declared to be worth the top dividend, with a large proportion of the prize pool awarded to the players responsible for submitting the highest-scoring lines. Large football pools would award second and subsequent dividends, splitting smaller proportions of the prize pool among players who had submitted lines scoring nearly as many points; at its peak, the Littlewoods Treble Chance game would offer up to six dividends. During the northern hemisphere summer, when football leagues were not in operation in the United Kingdom, competitions were based on the results of football matches taking place in Australia.

As well as this scoring system, the current Classic Pools game has an available top prize of £3 million. In order to secure this £3 million prize, or a share of it, the punter must successfully guess the nine score draws (draws of 1–1 or higher) when these are the only score draws on the coupon.

The other pools games currently provided by The Football Pools are based on entrants predicting the outcome; of results, scores and events in a variety of matches; rather than the awarding of points. Therefore, with the exception of the Premier 10 game (which pays out a smaller dividend for 9/10 correct as well as 10/10 correct[18]), the other games can only be won if all predictions are correct – if they are not all correct then the prize money is rolled over.[19][20][21][22]

Pools Panel

Matches which were postponed would often have their results adjudicated, for the sake of the football pools results, by a board known as the Pools Panel which had been formed in January 1963 when many football matches were postponed due to the Big Freeze of 1963, a particularly cold winter.[23][24][25] Initially, it had five members: ex-footballers Ted Drake, Tom Finney, Tommy Lawton and George Young and ex-referee Arthur Edward Ellis.[26][27] They predicted 7 draws, 8 away victories and 23 home victories on 23 January 1963 and their predictions were broadcast on television.[5]

The members changed regularly and by 1969, when Raich Carter joined, the other members were Neil Franklin, George Swindin, Arthur Ellis, Stan Mortensen and Ian McColl, under the chairmanship of Sir Ronald Howe. They met in London's Connaught Rooms. It was rumoured that their remuneration was considerably in excess of the national wage of the time.[28]

By 1994, the panel members were Ellis, Gordon Banks, Roger Hunt, Tony Green and Maurice Peston, and the panel was meeting at the London Hilton on Park Lane.[27] Other former members include Gerald Nabarro and Ronnie Simpson.[29][30]

The panel meets in private session each Saturday from November to April. Its decisions are released once all ongoing matches have entered half time, but before any final results are known.[27] By 2016, there were only three members: Banks, Green and Hunt.[26]

After the death of Banks in February 2019 and Hunt's retirement from the panel, they were replaced by Ian Callaghan and David Sadler, with Green continuing as a member of the three-man panel.[31]

Results

Until recently[when?], pools results were published in most national newspapers a day or two after the Saturday on which the matches were played. Grids marking the points totals per game were sometimes published, against which a pools coupon could be aligned to read off the scores.

The BBC television programme Grandstand used to broadcast the winning match numbers and any Pools Panel verdicts as part of its Final Score segment in the late afternoon. Pools news was also given out on the BBC radio programme Sports Report until May 2007.

With scores being read out on radio and television it was also common to relay the message "claims by telegram" for days when around eight score-draws occurred (and thus few players expected to achieve maximum points), through "claims by registered mail only" for days when rather more winners were expected, to "no claims" when there were likely to be so many claimants that the mail would have been overwhelmed.

With the arrival of internet-based pools games, the need for players to score their own coupons was removed. Automatic scoring and payout is now standard on all internet-based pools games.

Winning

Typically, a fraction of a penny would be charged for each line entered, though players often had the option to play each line at a higher stake and so receive a higher share of the pool should their line prove a winner. Accordingly, players would usually submit many different lines in a single entry. Popular ways to do this were "full perm" entries, where 10 (or 11, or more) matches were selected and every possible combination of eight matches selected from the total was entered as a single line. As there are C(10,8) = 45 ways to select eight matches from 10, the cost of such an entry was 45 times the cost of entering a single line. Note that the term "perm" was used despite the relevant mathematical operation being combination rather than permutation, as the order in which the eight matches were selected was irrelevant. The pools companies, many daily newspapers and the sporting press also issued "plans", which were subsets of full perms: these enabled the punter to cover more matches for the same stake, with the proviso that even if eight draws were in the selections, they might not all be in a single line of the plan (but well designed plans could give a guarantee, such as 'if the plan hits eight draws it must win at least a third dividend').

The largest prizes would be awarded when only one line was entered scoring the maximum number of points; typically this would occur when only eight or nine matches ended in score draws, so only one player would have the line scoring the maximum. These biggest jackpot prizes could be several hundred thousand pounds, sometimes more than a million. Prizes depended on the number of players and the cost per line, which varied between pools companies and increased over the years; one winner, Viv Nicholson, gained notoriety by declaring she was going to "spend, spend, spend" after winning £152,319 in 1961. The story of her subsequent extravagance and eventual bankruptcy was eventually made into a musical named after her assertion.

At the other extreme, payouts of less than a pound were quite common, as lower dividends when many entries won. Most players could expect to receive at least one low payout if they played for long enough.

In its current form, the Classic Pools game has a top prize of £3 million, separate to the pool prize that is given to the highest point scorer(s). In order to secure this £3 million prize, or a share of it, the punter must successfully guess the nine score draws (draws of 1–1 or higher) when these are the only score draws on the coupon.

With the arrival of the latest online pools games such as Premier 10 and Super 6, the overall pool size is less than the Classic Pools game, but the odds of winning a major prize are increased because fewer predictions are required to complete a coupon and, also, fewer individuals play each coupon.

Historic wins

Some notable UK football pools winners:[8]

Year Winner Amount Notes
1957 Nellie McGrail, Stockport £205,235[32]
1961 Keith Nicholson, Castleford £152,319 husband of Viv Nicholson[33]
1972 Cyril Grimes, Liss, Hampshire £512,683 first win over £500,000
1979 Irene Powell, Port Talbot £882,000 first win over £750,000
1986 a syndicate of hospital workers from Devizes £1,017,890 first million-pound win
1987 Barry Dinsdale, Kingston upon Hull £1,910,972
1991 Rodi Woodcock £2,072,220 first double-millionaire
1993 Judy Smith, Isle of Portland £2,077,683.60 highest UK win at that time
1994 a syndicate from Worsley £2,924,622 the inaugural weekend of the National Lottery
2010 14 players shared £3 million and one Zetters player scooped £1 million
2010 Michael Elliott, Brechin £3,001,511 the highest-ever jackpot, won by betting on eight 2–2 draws across Spain, Scotland and England
2011 four winners won £3 million split four ways, each receiving £750,000

Other games

Other games offered by football pools companies take the form of "8 homes", "4 draws", "5 aways" or the like, where lines consisting of a smaller number of matches are selected and a line is deemed to have won if all the selected matches result in home wins, away wins or draws (irrelevant of the size of the draw) respectively. The cost per line is generally higher; because these attract far fewer players, prizes are generally lower. Some football pools companies additionally organised lotteries, betting on lottery results or spot the ball[34] competitions at various points.

In predicting "Homes and Aways", players typically mark more than, for example, eight homes (they might mark 13) and thus their stake increases by the mathematics of combinations. Each line is called a "perm" ("permutation") even though it is actually a mathematical combination not a permutation. It is also possible to reduce the number of perms by taking the most likely and marking them as "bankers" i.e. that they appear on every combination.

Tax

Companies organising football pools were heavily taxed; in 1991, the levy was reduced from 40% of turnover to 37½% of turnover.[35] Additionally, from 1975 on, 2½% of the entry fees went to form the Football Trust which distributed money to football throughout the UK, in particular to help clubs redevelop their stadiums in line with the recommendations made by the Taylor Report. The business was a reliable source of cash for the pools companies. Each week the money staked was received by the pools company, they deducted their costs, paid the tax, then deducted their profit. What was left was then the prize money available to the winners.

Charitable giving

The Football Pools have donated over £1.1 billion to sporting-related causes. During the 2009/10 football season a further £6 million was donated to football initiatives including the following[8]

  • The Every Player Counts scheme – to grow disability football provision across 44 Football League clubs in England and Wales and increase the opportunities for people with varying disabilities to access sports through their local Football Clubs
  • The Premier League Health scheme – to help tackle a range of men’s health issues including testicular cancer, depression and alcoholism
  • The Fit for Football, Fit for Life scheme – to help tackle serious health issues for young people across 30 Scottish Football League clubs

Decline

Competition from the National Lottery led to a rapid fall-off in players, from a peak of 10 million in 1994 to 700,000 in 2007.[36] Vernons closed its pools operation in February 1998, and ran a lucky-dip game called Easy Play with the National Lottery during the 1998–99 football season. It resumed its traditional business afterwards.

In 2000, Littlewoods Pools was sold for £161 million. The company became part of Littlewoods Gaming, a division of Sportech. Sportech bought Zetters in 2002 and Vernons (which had previously been acquired by betting company Ladbrokes in 1989) in 2007, and announced plans to rebrand the competition as The New Football Pools, launching online at footballpools.com during summer 2008.[36] The competition became known as The Football Pools[8] and provided classic football pools games alongside other pools variants, with coupons containing a smaller number of football matches. Sportech sold the business to private equity firm OpCapita in 2017.[37]

The Littlewoods Football Pools Collection, which records the history of the pools, is held by the National Football Museum.

In other countries

Outside the United Kingdom, similar betting games are frequently known as toto competitions; the name derives from totalisator machines which are used to process the parimutuel betting involved. While the principle of requiring entrants to predict the results of football matches in advance remains the same, the format is similar to the British Jackpot 12, Premier 10 and Soccer 6.

Typically, a list of 13 matches for the coming week will be given. Pools entrants select the result of each one, whether it will be a home win, an away win or neither of these, typically by marking each match with either a 1, a 2 or an N (sometimes X or 0). It is possible to enter two or three results for one or more matches, in which case the entry is treated as a number of separate entries for all possible combinations given; marking two possible results for each of five matches and all three possible results for each of four matches will result in submitting 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 3 × 3 × 3 = 32 × 81 = 2592 different entries. All entries submitting 13 correct predictions will be declared to have won the top prize; sometimes, prizes for fewer correct predictions are also awarded.

The Intertoto Cup football competition was inaugurated by the football pools companies of central Europe to provide matches for their toto coupons during the summer months.

In popular culture

The pools feature prominently in the British films Easy Money (1948) and Home and Away (1956) starring Jack Warner, the Italian films Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti (1959) and Al bar dello sport (1983), and the Spanish films La quiniela (1960) and Jenaro, el de los 14 (1974). In "The Football Pools," the final episode of the fifth television series of Hancock's Half Hour (1959), Tony Hancock has picked seven draws and nervously attends a late-kickoff match with the eighth draw and top dividend on the line. Viv Nicholson"'s life after her win of more than £152,000 in 1961 was made into the musical "Spend Spend Spend". Charles Causley's poem Timothy Winters begins "Timothy Winters comes to school, With eyes as wide as a football pool". This was used prominently by Christopher Eccleston's character in Hearts and Minds, a 1995 television series.[38]

See also

References

  1. ^ (PDF). 6 August 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 April 2012.
  2. ^ . Football Pools. Archived from the original on 22 August 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  3. ^ "Proposed Disposal of the Football Pools Business for cash consideration of £83.0 million". OpCapita. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  4. ^ "Our Football Prize Competitions". Cricket and Football Field. Bolton. vi (155): 8. 10 September 1887.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Ballard, John; Suff, Paul (1999). World Soccer The Dictionary of Football. Boxtree Ltd. p. 468. ISBN 0-7522-2434-4.
  6. ^ Dudgeon, Piers (2012). Our Liverpool: Memories of Life in Disappearing Britain. Hachette UK. ISBN 978-0755364442.
  7. ^ a b c The Celebrated Pedestrian and Other Historical Curiosities. Random House. 2013. pp. 84–85. ISBN 978-1448142095.
  8. ^ a b c d . Community.footballpools.com. Archived from the original on 27 September 2008. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  9. ^ Jones, Stephen G. (1992). Sport, Politics and the Working Class: Organised Labour and Sport in Inter-war Britain. Manchester University Press. p. 52. ISBN 0719036801.
  10. ^ a b c d e Nawrat, Chris; Hutchings, Steve (1995). The Sunday Times Illustrated History of Football. Reed International Books Ltd. ISBN 1-85613-847-X.
  11. ^ a b "BETTING (No. 1) BILL". 3 April 1936. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  12. ^ Dan O'Neill (19 November 2001). "Generous Sherman brothers should not be forgotten; Time to remember". South Wales Echo. Retrieved 12 February 2018 – via Free Online Library.
  13. ^ a b "FOOTBALL POOLS (RE-ORGANISATION)". Hansard. 18 November 1947. Retrieved 16 March 2020.
  14. ^ Nawrat, Chris; Hutchings, Steve (1995). The Sunday Times Illustrated History of Football. Reed International Books Ltd. p. 179. ISBN 1-85613-847-X.
  15. ^ "Zetters Group plc announces disposal of football pools business to Sportech plc". 14 August 2002. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
  16. ^ "Student jailed for cheating pools syndicate". The Independent. 15 September 1995.
  17. ^ "Gambling Act 2005". www.legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  18. ^ (PDF). 13 August 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 April 2012.
  19. ^ (PDF). 1 August 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 April 2012.
  20. ^ (PDF). 6 August 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 April 2012.
  21. ^ (PDF). August 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 April 2012.
  22. ^ (PDF). August 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 April 2012.
  23. ^ "The Pools Panellist". The Times.(subscription required)
  24. ^ Murray, Scott; Ingle, Sean; Dart, James (8 December 2010). "How was the pools panel created?". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  25. ^ Needham, Al (March 2003). "Pools unto themselves". When Saturday Comes. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  26. ^ a b "The Birth of the Pools Panel". The Football Pools. Retrieved 25 May 2017.
  27. ^ a b c Baker, Andrew (27 March 1994). "Almanack: Pools panel draw a veil". The Independent. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  28. ^ Garrick, Frank (2003). Raich Carter The Biography. SportsBooks Limited. p. 218. ISBN 1-899807-18-7.
  29. ^ Culf, Andrew (27 August 2005). "Pools firms hit by tidal wave of online betting". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 May 2017.
  30. ^ Dart, James (11 January 2006). "Have any ex-players sat on the pools panel?". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 May 2017.
  31. ^ Foster, Richard (17 June 2020). "The pools panel: three former players who never stopped in lockdown". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
  32. ^ "The Littlewoods Organisation", The Times, 14 May 1958 p14
  33. ^ "Viv Nicholson, pools winner - obituary". The Telegraph.
  34. ^ . Football Pools. Archived from the original on 29 June 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  35. ^ A Draft Submission to The Right Honourable Kenneth Clarke MP QC Her Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to the Taxing of such Lottery or Lotteries as may be Established Pursuant to The National Lottery Etc Act 1993 Sean Gadd, 1 March 1997 11 March 2005 at the Wayback Machine
  36. ^ a b Birmingham Post, 19 March 2008 p25, "Football pools names disappear"
  37. ^ Sportech to sell historic Football Pools business for £83m The Telegraph 2 March 2017 (subscription required)
  38. ^ "Art Thou Beguil'd Now? - Christopher Eccleston News". 16 February 1995. Retrieved 14 January 2022.

Further reading

  • Hubert Phillips, Pools and the Punter, Watts, London, 1955
  • Mark Clapson, A Bit of a Flutter: Popular Gambling and English Society, 1823–1961 (1992)

External links

  • A Game of Two Halves? The Business of Football
    • copy

football, pools, this, article, about, soccer, pools, pools, found, with, other, football, betting, pool, united, kingdom, football, pools, often, referred, pools, betting, pool, based, predicting, outcome, association, football, matches, taking, place, coming. This article is about soccer pools For pools as found with other football see betting pool In the United Kingdom the football pools often referred to as the pools is a betting pool based on predicting the outcome of association football matches taking place in the coming week The pools are typically cheap to enter and may encourage gamblers to enter several bets The traditional and most popular game was the Treble Chance now branded the Classic Pools game Players pick 10 11 or 12 football games from the offered fixtures to finish as a draw in which each team scores at least one goal The player with the most accurate predictions wins the top prize or a share of it if more than one player has these predictions In addition there is a special 3 000 000 prize or share of it for correctly predicting the nine score draws draws of 1 1 or higher when these are the only score draws on the coupon 1 Players can win large cash prizes in a variety of other ways under a points based scoring system Entries were traditionally submitted through the post or via agents who collected entries throughout a specific area It is now possible to play online Littlewoods Vernons and Zetters were the largest pools companies Littlewoods was the first company to provide pools selling them outside Manchester United s Old Trafford ground in 1923 In 1986 a syndicate of players became the first winners of a prize over 1 million 2 The football pools companies have traditionally had a charitable element donating over 1 1 billion to sports related causes The pools business declined after the introduction of the National Lottery in 1994 Littlewoods Vernons and Zetters were brought together in 2007 by Sportech under the brand The New Football Pools now known as The Football Pools They offer other small stake high prize games such as Premier 10 and Jackpot 12 In 2017 The Football Pools was sold to OpCapita a private equity company for 83 million 3 Contents 1 In the United Kingdom 1 1 Origins 1 2 Growth 1 2 1 Pools War 1 2 2 War years 1 2 3 Treble Chance 1 2 4 Agreement with the Football League 1 2 5 Off season 1 3 Mechanics 1 3 1 Entries 1 3 2 Scoring 1 3 3 Pools Panel 1 3 4 Results 1 3 5 Winning 1 4 Historic wins 1 5 Other games 1 6 Tax 1 7 Charitable giving 1 8 Decline 2 In other countries 3 In popular culture 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External linksIn the United Kingdom EditOrigins Edit Competitions for predicting the results of football matches are older than the football league itself The Cricket and Football Field newspaper in its edition of 10 September 1887 offered a prize of one guinea to the Competitor who predicts the results of four football matches to be played the following Saturday Readers were invited to cut out and fill in a coupon printed in the newspaper which had to be sent to the newspaper s offices by the Friday before the matches If more than one couponnier predicted all four exact scores correctly the prize would be shared between them There was no charge for entry beyond postage in fact readers were allowed to submit several coupons together presumably in order to encourage them to purchase several copies of the newspaper 4 By 1910 The Umpire was offering a first prize of 300 for predicting six results 5 In October 1922 John Moores Colin Askham and Bill Hughes heard about John Jervis Barnard a Birmingham man who had devised a football pool where punters would bet on the outcome of football matches 6 7 The payouts to winners came from the pool of money that was bet less 10 per cent to cover management costs It had not been particularly successful and Barnard was struggling to make a profit Hughes obtained one of Barnard s pools coupons the three friends decided they could do it better and on 1 February 1923 launched the Littlewood Football Pool as it was originally known A small office in Liverpool was rented and the first 4 000 coupons were distributed outside Manchester United s Old Trafford ground before one Saturday match that winter 8 Moores handed the coupons out himself helped by some young boys eager to earn a few pennies It was not an instant success as just 35 coupons were returned With bets totalling 4 7s 6d 4 37 the 10 per cent deducted did not cover the three men s expenses They decided to print 10 000 coupons and took them to Hull where they were handed out before a big game This time only one coupon was returned Midway through the 1924 25 football season the scheme was still losing money The three young men had already invested 200 each with no imminent prospect of things improving Hughes suggested they cut their losses and forget the whole thing and Askham agreed They expected Moores to concur but instead he offered to return the 200 they had each invested in return for their shares and they accepted By 1930 Moores had become a millionaire from the competition 7 In April 1929 Moores was prosecuted under the Ready Money Football Betting Act 1920 Following a court appearance he was convicted However as his company never accepted cash only postal orders that were cashed after the football results and the winning payout had been confirmed his appeal was upheld citation needed Growth Edit Vernons Pools was founded in 1925 also in Liverpool and Zetters was founded 1933 in London In 1934 the Football Pool Promoters Association was formed besides Littlewoods Vernons and Zetters its members were the other large pools companies including Cope s Pools based in London W S Murphy Edinburgh and Western Pools Newport 9 A report by the Royal Commission at the time suggested that the football pools should be prohibited the pools companies asked their customers to write to their Member of Parliament which led to the proposals being withdrawn 10 The 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act was passed on 27 March 1934 which included restrictions of pool betting The football pools did not fall under gambling legislation specifically the Betting and Gaming Act 1960 and its predecessors because they claimed to be competitions of skill rather than chance however their rules typically stated that all transactions were binding in honour only Typically between one quarter and half of the entry fees taken would be returned to the players as prizes Pools War Edit In 1936 revenue from the 28 pools companies 11 had reached almost 30 million per year 5 and the pools accounted for 4 million out of 6 million postal packets sent in the UK 11 The English Football League was opposed to the betting and decided to withhold publication of their fixture lists in an attempt to thwart the pools companies ability to print their coupons games involving long journeys were announced on Thursday evening and others on Friday evening The pools companies retaliated by printing coupons with just the home sides 10 then managed to obtain unofficial leaks of the fixtures and gave customers longer to get their coupons in The Pools War ended on 9 March 1936 after two weekends where the fixture lists were not published early 5 A further attempt to ban the pools was proposed in Parliament at a similar time by R J Russell but the bill was defeated on 3 April 1936 by 287 votes to 24 10 Barnard continued to run his competition until 1938 when he sold to Cope s Pools of London 7 Other pools companies included Brittens founded 1946 in Leicester Empire based in Blackpool and Sherman s Pools of Cardiff which was absorbed by Littlewoods in 1961 12 Dundee United set up a pools competition in 1956 to help fund ground improvements at Tannadice Park 5 War years Edit During World War II the Post Office refused to deliver the large number of coupons as they were not considered essential so a Unity Pool organisation was created for the seven largest pools companies to produce joint coupons 10 13 Treble Chance Edit The Treble Chance game was inaugurated in 1946 Players were given a list of football matches set to take place over the coming week and attempted to pick a line of eight of them whose results would be worth the most points by the scoring scheme traditionally by crossing specific boxes on a printed coupon A proportion of the players combined entry fees was distributed as prizes among those whose entries achieved the highest scores Prior to this the Penny Points and Penny Results were the most popular games The Treble Chance offered a potential large jackpot at a time when no other form of gambling in the United Kingdom did Some pools offered additional ways to win based on scores of football matches at half time or football matches in which a particular number of goals were scored By 1947 pools revenue had increased to 70 million a year with over 90 being spent with Littlewoods Vernon s Sherman s and Cope s It accounted for almost 15 million postal packets each week through the post office 13 By the 1950s 100 000 people were working in the industry 5 Agreement with the Football League Edit In July 1959 the High Court of Justice ruled that the Football League owned the copyright to their fixture lists and this led to a 10 year agreement between the pools companies and the English and Scottish Football Leagues whereby the pools companies would pay the leagues 0 5 of the stakes received or a minimum of 245 000 per year 5 10 During the 1972 73 season the deal between the Football League and the pools companies was extended for 13 years worth 23 million 14 Off season Edit With professional football not being played in the United Kingdom during the summer Zetters introduced Australian pools based on games played in Australia 15 Mechanics Edit Entries Edit Entries were traditionally made by post or via agents or collectors who received a percentage usually 12 5 of the money as a fee Main collectors who appointed the agents delivered the forms and payments to a regional office which were then dispatched to the companies central offices Legally the football pools collectors were agents of the entrants not the pools company Business for pools collectors was sustained by periodic canvassing where company agents knocked on doors in an area of a town or housing estate Many large factories had at least one employee who as a sideline collected coupons from fellow workers However many players were unaware that British law left them at the mercy of unscrupulous collectors who took their money but did not submit the coupons This was because the Gaming Act 1845 made all forms of gambling a debt of honour which meant that any dispute about winnings was exempt from legal redress in a court of law In 1995 a syndicate lost 2 3million when their collector stole their money and did not hand in their coupon The group wanted to sue the Pools company but it made it clear it did not employ collectors they were the punters agents 16 The debt of honour exemption to taking legal action over unpaid winnings was eventually repealed in the Gambling Act 2005 17 A variety of football pools games are now played on the Internet These include the classic pools game that traditionally includes a large number of fixtures spanning the weekend This is the same as the old Treble Chance which has been renamed and rebranded under new ownership New pools game variants include Jackpot 12 Premier 10 and Soccer 6 these are all games in which the player must correctly predict home win draw or away win for 12 10 and six mainly Premier League football matches These new pool games all offer large estimated pool sizes with low stakes it is possible for people to win tens of thousands of pounds staking as little as 50p Scoring Edit Scoring schemes have varied over the years The current Classic Pools game based on the old Treble Chance game uses a scoring scheme which awards three points to score draws matches where both team scored the same strictly positive number of goals two points to no score draws matches where neither team scored a goal and one point to both home wins matches where the home team scored more goals than the away team and away wins matches where the away team scored more goals than the home team The most famous historical scoring scheme differentiated between home wins and away wins awarding one and a half points for games resulting in away wins A scoring scheme used for only one year split score draws into two categories awarding three points only for matches ending 1 1 and two and a half points for higher scoring score draws The total score of each line would be calculated up to a maximum of 24 points The highest scoring line achieved by any player in that particular week s competition would be declared to be worth the top dividend with a large proportion of the prize pool awarded to the players responsible for submitting the highest scoring lines Large football pools would award second and subsequent dividends splitting smaller proportions of the prize pool among players who had submitted lines scoring nearly as many points at its peak the Littlewoods Treble Chance game would offer up to six dividends During the northern hemisphere summer when football leagues were not in operation in the United Kingdom competitions were based on the results of football matches taking place in Australia As well as this scoring system the current Classic Pools game has an available top prize of 3 million In order to secure this 3 million prize or a share of it the punter must successfully guess the nine score draws draws of 1 1 or higher when these are the only score draws on the coupon The other pools games currently provided by The Football Pools are based on entrants predicting the outcome of results scores and events in a variety of matches rather than the awarding of points Therefore with the exception of the Premier 10 game which pays out a smaller dividend for 9 10 correct as well as 10 10 correct 18 the other games can only be won if all predictions are correct if they are not all correct then the prize money is rolled over 19 20 21 22 Pools Panel Edit Matches which were postponed would often have their results adjudicated for the sake of the football pools results by a board known as the Pools Panel which had been formed in January 1963 when many football matches were postponed due to the Big Freeze of 1963 a particularly cold winter 23 24 25 Initially it had five members ex footballers Ted Drake Tom Finney Tommy Lawton and George Young and ex referee Arthur Edward Ellis 26 27 They predicted 7 draws 8 away victories and 23 home victories on 23 January 1963 and their predictions were broadcast on television 5 The members changed regularly and by 1969 when Raich Carter joined the other members were Neil Franklin George Swindin Arthur Ellis Stan Mortensen and Ian McColl under the chairmanship of Sir Ronald Howe They met in London s Connaught Rooms It was rumoured that their remuneration was considerably in excess of the national wage of the time 28 By 1994 the panel members were Ellis Gordon Banks Roger Hunt Tony Green and Maurice Peston and the panel was meeting at the London Hilton on Park Lane 27 Other former members include Gerald Nabarro and Ronnie Simpson 29 30 The panel meets in private session each Saturday from November to April Its decisions are released once all ongoing matches have entered half time but before any final results are known 27 By 2016 there were only three members Banks Green and Hunt 26 After the death of Banks in February 2019 and Hunt s retirement from the panel they were replaced by Ian Callaghan and David Sadler with Green continuing as a member of the three man panel 31 Results Edit Until recently when pools results were published in most national newspapers a day or two after the Saturday on which the matches were played Grids marking the points totals per game were sometimes published against which a pools coupon could be aligned to read off the scores The BBC television programme Grandstand used to broadcast the winning match numbers and any Pools Panel verdicts as part of its Final Score segment in the late afternoon Pools news was also given out on the BBC radio programme Sports Report until May 2007 With scores being read out on radio and television it was also common to relay the message claims by telegram for days when around eight score draws occurred and thus few players expected to achieve maximum points through claims by registered mail only for days when rather more winners were expected to no claims when there were likely to be so many claimants that the mail would have been overwhelmed With the arrival of internet based pools games the need for players to score their own coupons was removed Automatic scoring and payout is now standard on all internet based pools games Winning Edit Typically a fraction of a penny would be charged for each line entered though players often had the option to play each line at a higher stake and so receive a higher share of the pool should their line prove a winner Accordingly players would usually submit many different lines in a single entry Popular ways to do this were full perm entries where 10 or 11 or more matches were selected and every possible combination of eight matches selected from the total was entered as a single line As there are C 10 8 45 ways to select eight matches from 10 the cost of such an entry was 45 times the cost of entering a single line Note that the term perm was used despite the relevant mathematical operation being combination rather than permutation as the order in which the eight matches were selected was irrelevant The pools companies many daily newspapers and the sporting press also issued plans which were subsets of full perms these enabled the punter to cover more matches for the same stake with the proviso that even if eight draws were in the selections they might not all be in a single line of the plan but well designed plans could give a guarantee such as if the plan hits eight draws it must win at least a third dividend The largest prizes would be awarded when only one line was entered scoring the maximum number of points typically this would occur when only eight or nine matches ended in score draws so only one player would have the line scoring the maximum These biggest jackpot prizes could be several hundred thousand pounds sometimes more than a million Prizes depended on the number of players and the cost per line which varied between pools companies and increased over the years one winner Viv Nicholson gained notoriety by declaring she was going to spend spend spend after winning 152 319 in 1961 The story of her subsequent extravagance and eventual bankruptcy was eventually made into a musical named after her assertion At the other extreme payouts of less than a pound were quite common as lower dividends when many entries won Most players could expect to receive at least one low payout if they played for long enough In its current form the Classic Pools game has a top prize of 3 million separate to the pool prize that is given to the highest point scorer s In order to secure this 3 million prize or a share of it the punter must successfully guess the nine score draws draws of 1 1 or higher when these are the only score draws on the coupon With the arrival of the latest online pools games such as Premier 10 and Super 6 the overall pool size is less than the Classic Pools game but the odds of winning a major prize are increased because fewer predictions are required to complete a coupon and also fewer individuals play each coupon Historic wins Edit Some notable UK football pools winners 8 Year Winner Amount Notes1957 Nellie McGrail Stockport 205 235 32 1961 Keith Nicholson Castleford 152 319 husband of Viv Nicholson 33 1972 Cyril Grimes Liss Hampshire 512 683 first win over 500 0001979 Irene Powell Port Talbot 882 000 first win over 750 0001986 a syndicate of hospital workers from Devizes 1 017 890 first million pound win1987 Barry Dinsdale Kingston upon Hull 1 910 9721991 Rodi Woodcock 2 072 220 first double millionaire1993 Judy Smith Isle of Portland 2 077 683 60 highest UK win at that time1994 a syndicate from Worsley 2 924 622 the inaugural weekend of the National Lottery2010 14 players shared 3 million and one Zetters player scooped 1 million2010 Michael Elliott Brechin 3 001 511 the highest ever jackpot won by betting on eight 2 2 draws across Spain Scotland and England2011 four winners won 3 million split four ways each receiving 750 000Other games Edit Other games offered by football pools companies take the form of 8 homes 4 draws 5 aways or the like where lines consisting of a smaller number of matches are selected and a line is deemed to have won if all the selected matches result in home wins away wins or draws irrelevant of the size of the draw respectively The cost per line is generally higher because these attract far fewer players prizes are generally lower Some football pools companies additionally organised lotteries betting on lottery results or spot the ball 34 competitions at various points In predicting Homes and Aways players typically mark more than for example eight homes they might mark 13 and thus their stake increases by the mathematics of combinations Each line is called a perm permutation even though it is actually a mathematical combination not a permutation It is also possible to reduce the number of perms by taking the most likely and marking them as bankers i e that they appear on every combination Tax Edit Companies organising football pools were heavily taxed in 1991 the levy was reduced from 40 of turnover to 37 of turnover 35 Additionally from 1975 on 2 of the entry fees went to form the Football Trust which distributed money to football throughout the UK in particular to help clubs redevelop their stadiums in line with the recommendations made by the Taylor Report The business was a reliable source of cash for the pools companies Each week the money staked was received by the pools company they deducted their costs paid the tax then deducted their profit What was left was then the prize money available to the winners Charitable giving Edit The Football Pools have donated over 1 1 billion to sporting related causes During the 2009 10 football season a further 6 million was donated to football initiatives including the following 8 The Every Player Counts scheme to grow disability football provision across 44 Football League clubs in England and Wales and increase the opportunities for people with varying disabilities to access sports through their local Football Clubs The Premier League Health scheme to help tackle a range of men s health issues including testicular cancer depression and alcoholism The Fit for Football Fit for Life scheme to help tackle serious health issues for young people across 30 Scottish Football League clubsDecline Edit Competition from the National Lottery led to a rapid fall off in players from a peak of 10 million in 1994 to 700 000 in 2007 36 Vernons closed its pools operation in February 1998 and ran a lucky dip game called Easy Play with the National Lottery during the 1998 99 football season It resumed its traditional business afterwards In 2000 Littlewoods Pools was sold for 161 million The company became part of Littlewoods Gaming a division of Sportech Sportech bought Zetters in 2002 and Vernons which had previously been acquired by betting company Ladbrokes in 1989 in 2007 and announced plans to rebrand the competition as The New Football Pools launching online at footballpools com during summer 2008 36 The competition became known as The Football Pools 8 and provided classic football pools games alongside other pools variants with coupons containing a smaller number of football matches Sportech sold the business to private equity firm OpCapita in 2017 37 The Littlewoods Football Pools Collection which records the history of the pools is held by the National Football Museum In other countries EditOutside the United Kingdom similar betting games are frequently known as toto competitions the name derives from totalisator machines which are used to process the parimutuel betting involved While the principle of requiring entrants to predict the results of football matches in advance remains the same the format is similar to the British Jackpot 12 Premier 10 and Soccer 6 Typically a list of 13 matches for the coming week will be given Pools entrants select the result of each one whether it will be a home win an away win or neither of these typically by marking each match with either a 1 a 2 or an N sometimes X or 0 It is possible to enter two or three results for one or more matches in which case the entry is treated as a number of separate entries for all possible combinations given marking two possible results for each of five matches and all three possible results for each of four matches will result in submitting 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 32 81 2592 different entries All entries submitting 13 correct predictions will be declared to have won the top prize sometimes prizes for fewer correct predictions are also awarded The Intertoto Cup football competition was inaugurated by the football pools companies of central Europe to provide matches for their toto coupons during the summer months In popular culture EditThe pools feature prominently in the British films Easy Money 1948 and Home and Away 1956 starring Jack Warner the Italian films Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti 1959 and Al bar dello sport 1983 and the Spanish films La quiniela 1960 and Jenaro el de los 14 1974 In The Football Pools the final episode of the fifth television series of Hancock s Half Hour 1959 Tony Hancock has picked seven draws and nervously attends a late kickoff match with the eighth draw and top dividend on the line Viv Nicholson s life after her win of more than 152 000 in 1961 was made into the musical Spend Spend Spend Charles Causley s poem Timothy Winters begins Timothy Winters comes to school With eyes as wide as a football pool This was used prominently by Christopher Eccleston s character in Hearts and Minds a 1995 television series 38 See also EditGambling in the United Kingdom Footy tipping Sports betting Horace Batchelor radio promoter of the Famous Infra Draw Method Covering code for the mathematics behind continental European poolsReferences Edit The 8 from 49 Pool Rules Also known as the Classic Pools PDF 6 August 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 18 April 2012 Classic Pools MatchXtra Lucky Clover Football Pools Archived from the original on 22 August 2014 Retrieved 21 October 2015 Proposed Disposal of the Football Pools Business for cash consideration of 83 0 million OpCapita Retrieved 11 May 2020 Our Football Prize Competitions Cricket and Football Field Bolton vi 155 8 10 September 1887 a b c d e f g Ballard John Suff Paul 1999 World Soccer The Dictionary of Football Boxtree Ltd p 468 ISBN 0 7522 2434 4 Dudgeon Piers 2012 Our Liverpool Memories of Life in Disappearing Britain Hachette UK ISBN 978 0755364442 a b c The Celebrated Pedestrian and Other Historical Curiosities Random House 2013 pp 84 85 ISBN 978 1448142095 a b c d Football Pools News amp Predictions Community footballpools com Archived from the original on 27 September 2008 Retrieved 21 October 2015 Jones Stephen G 1992 Sport Politics and the Working Class Organised Labour and Sport in Inter war Britain Manchester University Press p 52 ISBN 0719036801 a b c d e Nawrat Chris Hutchings Steve 1995 The Sunday Times Illustrated History of Football Reed International Books Ltd ISBN 1 85613 847 X a b BETTING No 1 BILL 3 April 1936 Retrieved 24 March 2020 Dan O Neill 19 November 2001 Generous Sherman brothers should not be forgotten Time to remember South Wales Echo Retrieved 12 February 2018 via Free Online Library a b FOOTBALL POOLS RE ORGANISATION Hansard 18 November 1947 Retrieved 16 March 2020 Nawrat Chris Hutchings Steve 1995 The Sunday Times Illustrated History of Football Reed International Books Ltd p 179 ISBN 1 85613 847 X Zetters Group plc announces disposal of football pools business to Sportech plc 14 August 2002 Retrieved 25 March 2020 Student jailed for cheating pools syndicate The Independent 15 September 1995 Gambling Act 2005 www legislation gov uk Retrieved 1 February 2020 The Premier 10 Pool Rules PDF 13 August 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 18 April 2012 The Head2Head Pool Rules PDF 1 August 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 18 April 2012 Jackpot 12 PDF 6 August 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 18 April 2012 The Soccer 4 Pool Rules PDF August 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 18 April 2012 The Super 6 Pool Rules PDF August 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 17 April 2012 The Pools Panellist The Times subscription required Murray Scott Ingle Sean Dart James 8 December 2010 How was the pools panel created The Guardian Retrieved 23 March 2014 Needham Al March 2003 Pools unto themselves When Saturday Comes Retrieved 25 March 2014 a b The Birth of the Pools Panel The Football Pools Retrieved 25 May 2017 a b c Baker Andrew 27 March 1994 Almanack Pools panel draw a veil The Independent Retrieved 23 March 2014 Garrick Frank 2003 Raich Carter The Biography SportsBooks Limited p 218 ISBN 1 899807 18 7 Culf Andrew 27 August 2005 Pools firms hit by tidal wave of online betting The Guardian Retrieved 25 May 2017 Dart James 11 January 2006 Have any ex players sat on the pools panel The Guardian Retrieved 25 May 2017 Foster Richard 17 June 2020 The pools panel three former players who never stopped in lockdown The Guardian Retrieved 3 May 2022 The Littlewoods Organisation The Times 14 May 1958 p14 Viv Nicholson pools winner obituary The Telegraph Classic Pools MatchXtra Lucky Clover Football Pools Archived from the original on 29 June 2014 Retrieved 21 October 2015 A Draft Submission to The Right Honourable Kenneth Clarke MP QC Her Majesty s Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to the Taxing of such Lottery or Lotteries as may be Established Pursuant to The National Lottery Etc Act 1993 Sean Gadd 1 March 1997 Archived 11 March 2005 at the Wayback Machine a b Birmingham Post 19 March 2008 p25 Football pools names disappear Sportech to sell historic Football Pools business for 83m The Telegraph 2 March 2017 subscription required Art Thou Beguil d Now Christopher Eccleston News 16 February 1995 Retrieved 14 January 2022 Further reading EditHubert Phillips Pools and the Punter Watts London 1955 Mark Clapson A Bit of a Flutter Popular Gambling and English Society 1823 1961 1992 External links EditA Game of Two Halves The Business of Football Internet Archive copy Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Football pools amp oldid 1104878994, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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