Football pools

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.

[1] Players can win large cash prizes in a variety of other ways, under a points-based scoring system.

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.

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.

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".

[12] 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.

[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.

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

[5] Taypools, as their operation is known, became the model for dozens of other club-run pools and lotteries designed to help boost payrolls or build new stands.

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.

The Treble Chance offered a potential large jackpot at a time when no other form of gambling in the United Kingdom did.

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.

[5][11] During the 1972-73 season, the deal between the Football League and the pools companies was extended for 13 years worth £23 million.

[16] Entries were traditionally made by post, or via agents or collectors who received a percentage (usually 12.5%) of the money as a fee.

Business for pools collectors was sustained by periodic canvassing, where company agents knocked on doors in an area of a town or housing estate.

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.

The group wanted to sue the Pools company but it made it clear it did not employ collectors, they were the punters' agents.

[17] The "debt of honour" exemption to taking legal action over unpaid winnings was eventually repealed in the Gambling Act 2005.

[24][25][26] Initially, it had five members: ex-footballers Ted Drake, Tom Finney, Tommy Lawton and George Young and ex-referee Arthur Edward Ellis.

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.

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.

Prizes depended on the number of players and the cost per line, which varied between pools companies and increased over the years.

[33] In 1981, Tadeu Resende of Volta Redonda won $3,003,532 on the Brazilian football pools, Loteria Esportiva, the world's biggest gambling win at the time.

[40] 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.

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.

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.

[48] The bets help finance the Italian National Olympic Committee for which it was awarded their Golden Star for sporting merit in 1997.

[55] In 2022 historical comedy drama film Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, set in 1957, the title character becomes obsessed with a Christian Dior dress owned by one of her clients and after a big win on the football pools she sets out to save up the money to go to Paris and buy her own dress.