The Football Pools, an iconic Liverpool business, first started selling its coupons outside Old Trafford, home of fierce rivals Manchester United

On average we have a winner every 3 minutes

The Football Pools is the UK’s favourite football gaming brand

Pools, or tote betting, is the most popular legal form of sports-based betting outside of the UK

The global pools market in football and horseracing is worth $80 billion

We donated £600 million to help fund major improvements in stadium safety across many clubs in the UK

The global gaming market is worth $350 billion and growing +5% year on year

Sportech is one of the leading suppliers and operators of pools/tote betting in the world

Sportech has launched a Joint Venture in India

The biggest ever Football Pools top prize was £4 million won in March 2010

The Football Pools is the world’s oldest football gaming company

Across North America, Sportech Racing has a 50% market share in horseracing pools

We have a presence in over 30 countries

We have paid out over £10 billion in prize money to our customers

We are the exclusive operator of pools/tote betting on horseracing in the Netherlands

We are the leading provider of horseracing wagering solutions in North America with over 25,000 terminals

We process over $13 billion in bets every year

The Football Pools has over 500,000 players every week

Over the years we have donated over £1.1 billion to good causes

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Football Pools

How do pools work?

The most popular form of sports
betting in the world - simple

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The popularity of pools

Pools betting, also known as tote or pools/tote betting, is simple and easy to play. That’s why in some of the largest betting markets in the world, including the US, Japan and Hong Kong, pools are the most popular form of sports betting.

Pools betting has a global market value of $80 billion on football and horseracing alone and in many countries it is the only legalised form of sports betting.

The benefits of pools betting

Pools betting is a great offering for customers, operators and wider society. Here are just some of the many benefits of pools betting:

	Broad appeal:	Pools games are simple for customers to understand and play. That's why pools betting is the most popular form of sports betting in the world.
	Great value:	Customers can win life changing amounts of money from very small stakes. Pools games also often rollover, therefore giving a much bigger prize fund for players to win. The Football Pools has paid out over £10 billion over the years.
	Low risk:	This is a significant benefit compared to other forms of betting that are open to greater volatility.
	Customer flexibility:	Pools games also allow customers to make more selections and cover multiple outcomes. This gives the customer ultimate control and a greater chance of winning.
	Sustainability:	Pools games are low stakes for high rewards and competitions play out over a longer period of time than other forms of gambling and therefore the risk of problem gambling is greatly reduced. Pools gaming also generates revenues for Governments and wider society through betting duties, as well as creating employment. Pools betting often generates revenue for good causes too. The Football Pools has donated over £1.1 billion to good causes over the years.

step 1: making selections

A customer would make their selections for a pool game. In this example our Premier 10 game, whereby players predict home win, draw or away win for the weekend’s ten Premier League fixtures. In this example a customer may predict the following:

One of the great benefits of pools betting is that if you are not sure about a certain prediction, in this example, the outcome of Stoke Vs Aston Villa, then you can cover additional results by selecting home, win and draw. As you can see from this example multiple combinations of selections are open to customers.

The more selections you make, the more chance you have of winning, however the higher the entry cost will be.

step 2: entering the pool

Once you have made your selections you pay the entry fee proportional to the value of the bet. The more selections you make, the higher the costs of entry but the greater chance you have of winning. All entries must be entered into the pool before the event takes place and the competition starts.

All the entry fees are added together and from this taxes, commissions and a small fee for the operator, in this case Sportech, are deducted to form the overall pools prize fund.

The prize fund is the total amount of money available to be won by players entering the pool.

step 3: the pool prize fund and dividends

Once all the outcomes of events featured in the pool competition have been completed, the pool dividend can be calculated.

All winning entries will share the appropriate part of the pools prize fund. Pools competitions may pay out to different levels, in the example of Premier 10, players win with 9 correct selections and 10 correct selections.

The 9 correct prize fund will be shared equally amongst all entries with 9 correct selections and the 10 correct prize fund will be shared equally amongst all entries with 10 correct selections.

It really is as simple as that.