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]
^"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.
Kingdom, the footballpools, often referred to as "the pools", is a betting pool based on predicting the outcome of association football matches taking...
of every month In addition, Singapore Pools is the sole legal bookmaker and totalisator for association football and motor racing betting. On 29 September...
Littlewoods Pools building, located in Liverpool, England, was built in 1938 to serve as the headquarters of the Littlewoods footballpools enterprise...
particular case is the footballpools problem, based on football pool betting, where the aim is to come up with a betting system over n football matches that,...
derived its name from Toto, the German term for footballpools. Thommen, who had set up football betting pools in Switzerland in 1932, had a major interest...
in parts of New York state. Littlewoods' footballpools were founded in 1923 by John Moores. The Vernons pools were established in 1925, and Zetters in...
husband Keith won £152,319 (equivalent to £4,300,000 in 2023) on the footballpools in 1961. Nicholson became the subject of tabloid news stories for many...
Pari-Mutuel System include The Hong Kong Jockey Club, Tabcorp and The FootballPools. The globally patented Longitude Enhanced Pari-Mutuel System has its...
roots to a variety of mail order companies in northern England, the footballpools and mail order business founded by John Moores, as well as the Manchester-based...
racing and certain motor sports. Public sports, lottery, and toto (footballpools) are held under special laws in order to increase the income of national...
the Betting and Lotteries Act 1934 took the greyhounds into account. Footballpools became increasingly popular, and they were taxed through the Pool Betting...
countries. Before the advent of the internet, millions of people played the footballpools every week in the United Kingdom. In addition to organized sports betting...
to Scottish Football League clubs, apart from their attendances, was from the footballpools. In the year ended 31 March 1983, the pools generated £1...
public in 1957, the only other similar game available in the UK was the footballpools, with the National Lottery not coming into existence until 1994. Although...
a 2018 song "Toto" (Noizy song), a 2018 song featuring RAF Camora Footballpools, called "toto" in several languages Toto (lottery), a lottery in Singapore...
almost immediately by his portrayal of Keith Nicholson, husband of footballpools winner, Vivian Nicholson in John Goldschmidt's Spend, Spend, Spend (a...
Crown Pools is a swimming venue in Ipswich that opened in 1984. Crown Pools has a collection of three pools: a 8-lane 25x18m pool (0.9-1.8m deep), a pleasure...
as footballpools. American sports lotteries often do not require contestants to purchase a lottery ticket or make an initial wager. Hockey pools are...
musical ensemble of female vocalists. They were formed at the Vernons footballpools company in the 1950s in Liverpool, settling down to a sixteen strong...
been considered much more of a threat than large-scale lotteries or footballpools. Public drunkenness is quite unacceptable in some societies, and legal...
providing solely footballpools. They would go on to add horse racing, greyhound racing, American football, ice hockey, basketball and darts pools, making them...
Shermans Pools Ltd of Cardiff, a footballpools promoter. The post-war paper-shortage had led the government to make an allocation of paper to the Football Pool...