ABSTRACT
This book argues that the football pools emerged to meet the working-class demand for an easy, largely legal, way to win significant amounts of money to escape the humdrum nature of their lives. There was much opposition to this gambling opportunity, which was not seen as some type of rational recreation. Nevertheless, the main pool companies built up their business through a strong publicity campaign with their punters and by normalising gambling with them as a safe and sensible investment. Indeed, their influence spread from their Liverpool heartland, throughout Lancashire and the United Kingdom, through the agency of its network of collectors, as well as publicity. However, the liberalisation of British gambling laws in the 1960s, whilst making gambling more acceptable as a feature of British citizenship, made gambling alternatives to the football pools more readily available. This led to a gentle decline in the number of households filling in the pools, and ultimately opened the way for The National Lottery to replace the pools. Indeed, The National Lottery quickly replaced the football pools as the major, and acceptable, gambling activity of the nation. Whilst not unique, the commercial form of the football pools has essentially been a short-term British, and working class, experience.
