Updating the market this morning, the board of Sportech Plc has announced that it has reached an agreement to sell The Football Pools to Burlywood Capital (Burlywood) for a total cash consideration of £97.25 million on a debt free/cash free basis.
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The Liverpool-based Football Pools is set to be sold in a deal worth nearly £100m.
Burlywood, whose board comprises partners Sportingbet founder Mark Blandford, stockbroker and investment banker Andrew Burnett, Neil Goulden and Sir David Michels, is a venture capital investor focussed on the digital “Pay2Play” entertainment industry.
Sportech bought Littlewoods Gaming, which included the pools, in 2000 and in 2007 it acquired Vernons and Zetters. Aiming to modernise its asset for digitally-led audiences in 2014 The Football Pools undertook a product revamp combined with a brand overhaul.
Previous year the business had sales of £33.8m and profits of £15.2 million.
Players pick up to 12 football matches that they predict will finish in a draw.
Punters no longer fill in paper coupons to bet on football results, with the Pools now operating online. The then Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald, called it “a disease which spread downwards to the industrious poor from the idle rich”.
Famous winners include West Yorkshire factory worker Viv Nicholson who scooped £152,319 in 1961, the equivalent of £3.1m today, and vowed to “spend, spend, spend” her winnings.
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About 10 million people were playing the pools each week before the launch of the National Lottery in 1994, which hit the game hard.
