Who owns vernons pools

This signalled the end of the popular football pools route to a jackpot. Now the public could win big by choosing six numbers rather than rely on a football match result. Following the wane in popularity the National Lottery brought about. The three main pools companies were purchased by Sportech. It was for small stakes and high prizes and incorporated other exciting games. X marks the spot, the nearest cross to the ball wins. This was an innovative betting business model at the time and one destined for greatness, but not at first.

So just how big did the pools become? Big enough to employ around , people in the distributing, collecting, and checking of coupons. Big enough to account for over 15 million postal packets every week. So pretty darn big. In terms of small-stakes big-win betting, the pools really was The National Lottery of its day. Of course, where one man succeeds, others will follow, and hot on the heels of John Moores and Littlewoods, came the emergence of rival pools companies.

One of the biggest of which is the subject of this article: Vernons. Close Join a growing community of media, marketing and advertising professionals today Read exclusive registrant only articles Read more articles each month Sign up for free specialised news bulletins Register Now Already Registered?

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Rival operations such as Vernons and Zetters sprang up and by the s around one-in-four of the British population were doing the pools. Sportech bought Littlewoods Gaming, which included the pools, in and in it acquired Vernons and Zetters.

Combining the three pools was meant to strengthen the game against the National Lottery, which launched in But the pools struggled against the might of the lottery. It still had 10 million players in , but this fell to , by and has halved again since.