FOOTBALL POOLS

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 August 1946, Page 9

FOOTBALL POOLS

LURE OF HUGE PRIZES BRITAIN 10,000,000 CUSTOMERS A ' WEEK [N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent.] LONDON, Aiigust 4. Football pool promoters are astute businessmen. By filling in their forecast coupons and paying them Id you stand to win between £25,000 and £30,000, r The odds sound fantastic. They aye, but there are 10,000,000 people in Britain who fill in several coupons every, week and then anxiously await the Association football results on Saturday night, hoping to win a fortune.. Six persons each won more than £25,000 last year. Before the war football promoters had a turnover of £35,000,000. This coming winter, with Association football back to its normal programme of seven years ago, they hope to increase the figure to £100,000,000. More Money to Spend The ’ reason is that people have more money to spend nowadays than they did before' the war, and the promoters anticipate that they will be willing to gamble more freely. The possibility is that the promoters are right, for it is estimated that for every £1 spent on admissions to cinemas, sporting events, theatres, dance halls, and other amusements, more than £3 is gambled on horses, dogs, or the football pools. Altogether it is estimated that about £500,000,000 a year is being gambled in Britain at present, or rather more than £ 1 for every £2O of the national income. This is twice as much as was spent on lighting and heating Britain’s houses last year; five times as much as was spent on furnishing them. It is more than was spent on cigarettes, and nearly as much as was spent on beer. Many people in Britain are disturbed' by this upward trend in gambling. One of them is Lord Morrison of Tottenham, who admits that he spends 2/6 to 5/- a week on the football pools. He sees the pools as a form of betting which “might become the worst financial ramp there has been for a long time.” Enormous Profits Suggestions are made that there should be some kind of a pools’ board to license individuals or firms who carry on the pools and that the Government should collect its share of revenue and see that the enormous profits are shared ampng the 40,000 Association clubs in Britain. Lord Morrison said that the Swedish Government runs pools operating on fixtures on the British League and cup tie matches and in a few years netted £8,000,000. Football teams are already beginning to train for the coming Reason, and the football pools’ promoters are also on the move. In the last fortnight nearly 15,000,000 packbts of literature have been distributed through the post. Thousands of door-to-door canvassers are at work. News agents and small shopkeepers are being appointed as pool agents. Soon eyery factory and workshop in Britain will have representatives collecting money every week from workers and sending it to the pools.