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Speaking
of Horace Bachelor and
Keynsham, spelt
K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M reminds
me …… Football
Pools have a long
history in the UK. It was
introduced by Littlewoods
and founded by Sir
John Moore and his
brother Cecil, in
1923. The first ever jackpot,
known then as a first
dividend, was worth
the princely sum of £2.60.
This amount may not sound
like particularly
impressive today, but it
was in fact a princely
sum at the time.
Although Football
Pools were
immediately popular with
the public, they did not
sit well with the
establishment. In fact, Ramsay
MacDonald once said
that the pools were a
disease which spread
downwards to the
industrious poor from the
idle rich!
Fortunately
for punters
wanting to try their
luck (or skill),
Football Pools
were not outlawed or put
out of business and they
went from strength to
strength. It did not take
long before competing
companies were formed,
each vying for the punter’s
money. Vernons
Pools came on the
scene in 1925, and eight
years later in 1933, Zetters
Pools became the
third company to offer
their services to
players. In 1945, George
Britten started his
family football pool
firm, Brittens Pools.
Playing
the Football Pools
before the Internet
involved completing by
hand the special coupons
provided by each of the
companies. Initially
coupons were readily
available from newsagents
and tobacconists, places
most frequented by the
working man. The main
football pool companies
also provided a service
where coupons were
hand-delivered directly
to players by various
networks of collectors
across the UK. These
collectors acted as middlemen
between the punters and
the pools companies. Each
week, when a collector
called to pick-up the
completed pools coupon
along with the
appropriate amount of
money necessary to play,
a fresh set of coupons
for the following
week’s series of
games would be left.
After
operating in this format
for many years, the
companies went to a postal
subscription service.
However, collectors have
not totally disappeared,
as a small number
continue to operate in
remote areas where
players are unable to get
their coupons registered
in any other ways.
With the
launching of the National
Lottery in the UK in
1994, it was feared that
the Football Pools would
suffer a loss of revenue.
However, this has not
proven to be the case.
Whereas winning the National
Lottery is a matter
of pure chance no matter
what the value of the jackpot
may be, the chance of
winning the football pool
is increased with the
application of knowledge,
judgment and skill.
Today,
punters have the choice
to register their entry online.
This will eventually cause the manual completion
of coupons to become
redundant in the
not-so-distant future. In
addition, there is now a
wider variety of football
pool games on offer
compared to those
available in the past.
Punters are now able to
pick the game that best
suits both their aspiration
and their attitude
towards risk.
As you can
see, the football pools
have come a long way
since their introduction,
but they remain as
popular as ever with the
public despite the advent
of legalised gambling
with its increased
competition for betting
money. It would seem that
the appeal of trying to
predict the results of
the Saturday football
matches together with the
chance to win big
money remains as enticing
as ever.
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