Misplaced Pages

#288711

80-620: The 1956 Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act is the primary legislation under which the bonds are authorised; the similar concept of Premium Bonds were introduced in the United Kingdom at the same time. Bonds were first sold in March 1957, with the first draw held in September of that year. Originally the Bank of Ireland , as the government's banker, was the operator of the scheme. When the scheme commenced,

160-605: 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

240-399: A Unity Pool organisation was created for the seven largest pools companies to produce joint coupons. 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

320-457: 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

400-524: A default due to the United States debt ceiling . In 2008, two financial economists, Lobe and Hoelzl, analysed the main driving factors for the immense marketing success of Premium Bonds. One in three Britons invest in Premium Bonds. The thrill of gambling is significantly boosted by enhancing the skewness of the prize distribution. However, using data collected over the past fifty years, they found that

480-400: A half hours to complete its monthly draw. In August 2004, ERNIE 4 was brought into service in anticipation of an increase in prizes each month from September 2004. Developed by LogicaCMG , it was 500 times faster than the original and generated a million numbers an hour; these were checked against a list of valid bonds. By comparison, the original ERNIE generated 2,000 numbers an hour and was

560-472: 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,

640-545: A millionaire from the competition. 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. Vernons' Pools was founded in 1925, also in Liverpool, and Zetters

720-516: A minimum purchase of €25 is required. In September 2009 the Prize Bond fund exceeded €1bn for the first time. The weekly draw is held on Fridays at 12:30 in the General Post Office , Dublin . Prizes range from €75 to a jackpot of €50,000 except for the last draw of each month, when the jackpot is €500,000. As of 2023, the prize fund will almost treble in size to c. €48m and the size of the fund

800-516: 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. By the 1950s, 100,000 people were working in the industry. In July 1959, the High Court of Justice ruled that the Football League owned

880-524: 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

SECTION 10

#1732852100289

960-467: 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

1040-543: A smaller dividend for 9/10 correct as well as 10/10 correct ), 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. 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

1120-470: A smaller number of football matches. Sportech sold the business to private equity firm OpCapita in 2017. The Littlewoods Football Pools Collection, which records the history of the pools, is held by the National Football Museum . Outside the United Kingdom, similar betting games are frequently known as toto competitions; the name derives from totalisator machines which are used to process

1200-612: A syndicate of players became the first winners of a prize over £1 million. 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

1280-423: 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,

1360-516: A whole calendar month before they qualify for a prize. As an example, a bond purchased mid-May must then be held throughout June before being eligible for the draw in July (and onwards). Bonds purchased by reinvestment of prizes are immediately eligible for the following month's draw. Numbers are entered in the draw each month, with an equal chance of winning, until the bond is cashed. As of 2019, each person may own bonds up to £50,000. Since 1 February 2019,

1440-538: Is a joint venture between the founders An Post and FEXCO and is based in Killorglin , County Kerry . The company was created in 1989 with issued share capital between the founders of 50% each and will operate the scheme under its current (as of 2011) contract until the end of 2019. Employees of the Prize Bond Company are seconded from the respective partner, FEXCO is responsible for administration, whilst An Post

1520-406: Is equal to one month's interest on all bonds eligible for the draw. The annual interest is set by NS&I and was 1.40% as of December 2017 , reducing to 1.00% as of December 2020 . This was increased to 2.2%, as of October 2022 then increased again to 3% as of January 2023 and is now at 4.65% from September 2023. The following table lists the distribution of prizes on offer in

1600-416: Is managed by the government's National Savings and Investments agency. The principle behind Premium Bonds is that rather than the stake being gambled, as in a usual lottery , it is the interest on the bonds that is distributed by a lottery. The bonds are entered in a monthly prize draw and the government promises to buy them back, on request, for their original price. The government pays interest into

1680-515: Is now almost €4.7 billion Winnings are tax-free within Ireland . There have been some concerns that the bonds do not represent value for money for the government. Of particular concern is the cost of administration relative to the cost of interest on borrowings. Premium Bond Premium Bonds is a lottery bond scheme organised by the United Kingdom government since 1956. At present it

SECTION 20

#1732852100289

1760-469: Is responsible for accounting and marketing in addition to conducting the draws. The National Treasury Management Agency is responsible for the regulation of the company, since the Agency was established in 1990. Originally bonds could be purchased as in units of five Irish pounds , with a minimum purchase of £10. Today the unit price is 6.25 Euros (equivalent to IR£4.92 at the final fixed exchange rate) and

1840-540: Is the name for a series of hardware random number generators developed for this application. There have been five models of ERNIE to date. All of them have generated true random numbers derived from random statistical fluctuations in a variety of physical processes. The first ERNIE was built at the Post Office Research Station by a team led by Sidney Broadhurst. The designers were Tommy Flowers and Harry Fensom and it derives from Colossus , one of

1920-409: 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. Scoring schemes have varied over the years. The current Classic Pools game, based on

2000-464: The Big Freeze of 1963 , a particularly cold winter. Initially, it had five members: ex-footballers Ted Drake , Tom Finney , Tommy Lawton and George Young and ex-referee Arthur Edward Ellis . They predicted 7 draws, 8 away victories and 23 home victories on 23 January 1963 and their predictions were broadcast on television. The members changed regularly and by 1969, when Raich Carter joined,

2080-659: The COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom . Bond holders can check whether they have won any prizes on the National Savings & Investment Premium Bond Prize Checker website, or the smartphone app, which provides lists of winning bond numbers for the past six months. Older winning numbers (more than 18 months old) can also be checked in the London Gazette Premium Bonds Unclaimed Prizes Supplement . In December 2008, NS&I reduced

2160-675: The Royal Exchange in the City of London, the Lord Mayor of London , Alderman Sir Cuthbert Ackroyd , bought the first bond from the Postmaster General, Dr Charles Hill , for £1. Councillor William Crook, the mayor of Lytham St Anne's , bought the second. The Premium Bonds office was in St Annes-on-Sea , Lancashire, until it moved to Blackpool in 1978. Winners of the jackpot are told on

2240-503: 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

2320-596: The 2009/10 football season a further £6 million was donated to football initiatives including the following 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. 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

2400-458: 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,

2480-531: 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

Prize Bond - Misplaced Pages Continue

2560-569: The Pools company but it made it clear it did not employ collectors, they were the punters' agents. The "debt of honour" exemption to taking legal action over unpaid winnings was eventually repealed in the Gambling Act 2005 . 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

2640-489: The September 2023 draw. While the mean return is 4.4% as of March 2024, the median return is lower. For an investor with the maximum £50,000 invested, the median return is 3.9% (£1,950). For investors with lower amounts invested, the median return is lower. The typical investor with £1000 or less invested will receive nothing. Premium Bonds are tax free, so are more attractive to higher rate taxpayers. ERNIE - an acronym for "Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment" -

2720-583: The UK population. The term "premium bond" has been used in the English language since at least the late 18th century, to mean a bond that earns no interest but is eligible for entry into a lottery. The modern iteration of Premium Bonds were introduced by Harold Macmillan , as Chancellor of the Exchequer , in his Budget of 17 April 1956, to control inflation and encourage people to save. On 1 November 1956, in front of

2800-415: The United Kingdom during the summer, Zetters introduced Australian pools, based on games played in Australia. 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

2880-485: 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

2960-406: The ball 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

3040-403: The biannual draws were in September and March where by means of six drums the winning serial number was drawn randomly; in 1972 the serial number was increased from six to seven digits for bonds issued after that time. In 1993 regulation was made for the conduct of the draws on a weekly basis using a computer -driven random number generator to determine winning numbers. The Prize Bond Company

3120-465: The bond bears relatively low risk compared to many other investments. Aaron Brown discusses in a 2006 book Premium Bonds in comparison with equity-linked , commodity-linked and other "added risk" bonds. His conclusion is that it makes little difference, either to a retail investor or from a theoretical finance perspective, whether the added risk comes from a random number generator or from fluctuations in financial markets. Football pools In

3200-478: The bond fund (4.4% per annum from March 2024) from which a monthly lottery distributes tax-free prizes to bondholders whose numbers are selected randomly. The machine that generates the numbers is called ERNIE , an acronym for "Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment". Prizes range from £25 to £1,000,000 and (since September 2023) the odds of a £1 bond winning a prize in a given month are 21,000 to 1. Investors can buy bonds at any time but they must be held for

3280-501: 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). During the 1972-73 season, the deal between the Football League and the pools companies was extended for 13 years worth £23 million. With professional football not being played in

Prize Bond - Misplaced Pages Continue

3360-434: 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. The winning dividend paid out £2 12s 0d (£2.60). 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

3440-602: The entry fees taken would be returned to the players as prizes. In 1936, revenue from the 28 pools companies had reached almost £30 million per year, and the pools accounted for four million out of six million postal packets sent weekly in the UK. 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

3520-448: The first working day of the month, although the actual date of the draw varies. The online prize finder is updated by the third or fourth working day of the month. Winners of the top £1m prize are told in person of their win by "Agent Million", an NS&I employee, usually on the day before the first working day of the month. However, in-person visits were suspended, starting in May 2020, during

3600-400: 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

3680-487: 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

3760-780: The home sides, 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. 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. Barnard continued to run his competition until 1938, when he sold to Cope's Pools of London. Other pools companies included Brittens (founded 1946 in Leicester), Empire (based in Blackpool) and Sherman's Pools of Cardiff, which

3840-416: 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

3920-600: The interest rate (and therefore the odds of winning) due to the drop in the Bank of England base rate during the Great Recession , leading to criticism from members of Parliament, financial experts and holders of bonds; many claimed Premium Bonds were now "worthless", and somebody with £30,000 invested and "average luck" would win only 10 prizes a year compared to 15 the previous year. Investors with smaller, although significant, amounts would possibly win nothing. From 1 January 2009

4000-473: The latest model, was brought into service in March 2019, and is a quantum random number generator built by ID Quantique . It uses quantum technology to produce random numbers through light, replacing the former 'thermal noise' method. Running at speeds 21,000 times faster than the first ERNIE, it can produce 3 million winners in just 12 minutes each month. ERNIE, anthropomorphised in early advertising, receives Valentine cards, Christmas cards and letters from

4080-460: The line scoring the maximum. The odds for selecting 8 draws from 55 matches (if there are only 8 draws) for an all correct line is 1,217,566 to 1 against. 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 large winner, Viv Nicholson , gained notoriety by declaring she

SECTION 50

#1732852100289

4160-408: 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. 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

4240-454: 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

4320-551: The minimum purchase amount for Premium Bonds has been £25. As of September 2023 there are over 121   billion eligible Premium Bonds, each having a value of £1 . When introduced to the wider public in 1957, the only other similar game available in the UK was the football pools , with the National Lottery not coming into existence until 1994. Although many avenues of lotteries and other forms of gambling are now available to British adults, Premium Bonds are held by more than 24 million people, equivalent to more than 1 in 3 of

4400-481: The most likely and marking them as "bankers" i.e. that they appear on every combination. Companies organising football pools were heavily taxed; in 1991, the levy was reduced from 40% of turnover to 37½% of turnover. 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

4480-527: The newspaper. By 1910, The Umpire was offering a first prize of £300 for predicting six results. 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. 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

4560-489: The odds of winning a prize for each £1 of bond was 36,000 to 1. In October 2009, the odds returned to 24,000 to 1 with the prize fund interest rate increase. The odds reached 26,000 to 1 by October 2013 and then reverted to 24,500 to 1 in November 2017. As of September 2023 , the odds of winning are 1/21000; resulting in the expected number of prizes for the maximum £50,000 worth of bonds being 29 per year. The prize fund

4640-440: 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. Players can win large cash prizes in

4720-406: 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

4800-456: 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. By 1994, the panel members were Ellis, Gordon Banks , Roger Hunt , Tony Green and Maurice Peston , and

4880-517: 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. In 1972, two people won approximately £1.5 million each on the state run Italian pools. In September 1975, Miron Vieira de Sousa, from the city of Ivolândia in Brazil, won a prize of 22 million Brazilian cruzeiros ($ 2.5 million), considered at

SECTION 60

#1732852100289

4960-512: The panel was meeting at the London Hilton on Park Lane . Other former members include Gerald Nabarro and Ronnie Simpson . 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. By 2016, there were only three members: Banks, Green and Hunt. After the death of Banks in February 2019 and Hunt's retirement from

5040-521: The panel, they were replaced by Ian Callaghan and David Sadler , with Green continuing as a member of the three-man panel. Until recently , 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

5120-414: 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

5200-523: The proposals being withdrawn. The Betting and Lotteries Act 1934 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

5280-440: The public. It is the subject of the song "E.R.N.I.E." by Madness , from the 1980 album Absolutely . It is also referenced by Jethro Tull in their album Thick as a Brick . Premium Bonds under various names exist or have existed in various countries. Similar programmes to UK Premium Bonds include: In 2023, American economist Paul Krugman used the name "premium bonds" for an unrelated type of bond that he proposed to avoid

5360-455: 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. The Football Pools have donated over £1.1 billion to sporting-related causes. During

5440-478: 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

5520-472: The size of a van. ERNIE 4 used thermal noise in transistors as its source of randomness to generate true random numbers. ERNIE's output was independently tested each month by the Government Actuary's Department , the draw being valid only if it was certified to be statistically consistent with randomness. At the end of its life it was moved to Bletchley Park's National Museum of Computing . ERNIE 5,

5600-597: The time "the biggest prize in Loteca and in the world, in prediction contests". 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. In December 1993, the Italian pools saw their highest jackpot ever recorded with 34 billion lire (£14 million). Some notable UK football pools winners: Other games offered by football pools companies take

5680-629: 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

5760-491: The world's first digital computers. It was introduced in 1957, with the first draw on 1 June, and generated bond numbers from the signal noise created by neon gas discharge tubes . ERNIE 1 is in the collections of the Science Museum in London and was on display between 2008 and 2015. ERNIE 2 replaced the first ERNIE in 1972. ERNIE 3 in 1988 was the size of a personal computer; at the end of its life it took five and

5840-416: 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

5920-490: Was absorbed by Littlewoods in 1961. Dundee United set up a pools competition in 1956 to help fund ground improvements at Tannadice Park . 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. During World War II , the Post Office refused to deliver the large number of coupons as they were not considered essential, so

6000-649: 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). 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

6080-468: 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. The odds of winning were around 80 to 1. In its current form,

6160-446: 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

6240-516: 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. The competition became known as The Football Pools and provided classic football pools games alongside other pools variants, with coupons containing

6320-491: Was sold to OpCapita , a private equity company, for £83 million. 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

6400-476: 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. Moores handed

#288711