PayPoint, the UK’s leading payment collection network, is pleased to announce a new partnership with The New Football Pools, building on an existing relationship between PayPoint and the biggest name in Football Pools.  PayPoint retailers will benefit from earning 7.5% commission on all transactions.

The new scheme is initially being piloted in Merseyside and the North East, enabling customers in those areas to play The New Football Pools games of the 16th August. Customers can play in store from Saturday 9th August in the week leading up to the New Season games. There will be two games available for customers to play: Footy15, with the chance to win a jackpot of £100,000 or more every week for predicting the outcomes of 15 fixtures and Premier 10, a ten fixture predictor game where a £20,000 jackpot is up for grabs each week. Customers predict home win, draw or away win and top prizes roll over every week if not won. The New Football Pools are undertaking extensive local advertising in the pilot regions to help drive customers to PayPoint outlets.  The new scheme will roll out to PayPoint outlets nationwide from September.

The New Football Pools, formerly Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters, is also launching for the 2008/2009 football season with a new star-studded panel of newly-appointed Pools Pundits forecasting results and performances.
 
Former Liverpool football stars Alan Hansen, John Barnes and ex-Chelsea player Tony Cascarino team up with referee Graham Poll to form the new Pools Pundits. Together they will be helping The New Football Pools gain unique insight into the game, giving predictions and opinion on every big weekly game.   

Founded in 1923, Littlewoods Football Pools was the first pools game in the UK, based on predicting the outcome of football matches each week.  ‘The Pools’ played a significant role in the community with people sharing football knowledge when completing their play coupons. PayPoint’s involvement will help revive the community tradition and enable the new breed of armchair football managers to easily play the new game at their local PayPoint outlet.

Ted Taylor, Managing Director of The New Football Pools said: “We see PayPoint as the ideal retail partner to launch our new interactive service and exciting new games – Premier 10 and Footy15. This way we’re continuing our tradition of making playing The Pools as easy as possible for everyone – it’s always been a national game with a real community focus so the locality and number of Paypoint retailers is key to us in maintaining this aspect. We look forward to encouraging our customers to play at PayPoint and with the new season just about to start, we’re sure this is a winning combination that will mutually benefit all.”

Mike Igoe, PayPoint’s Retail Director comments: “The partnership with The New Football Pools brings the beautiful game to local shops for the first time, enabling customers to play or pick up a fixture list when they pop in for a newspaper or groceries.  Retailers in the Merseyside and the North East regions will be the first to pilot the scheme but we are looking forward to rolling it out across the UK in September.”

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Enquiries:
PayPoint Press Office 
020 7100 9999
paypoint@mischiefpr.com

Notes to Editors
PayPoint is the leading cash and internet payments company in the UK also with operations in Ireland and Romania. We handle in excess of £7 billion from over 500 million transactions annually for more than 5,000 clients and merchants. The company operates with several payment networks:

• The PayPoint branded retail network numbers over 19,800 terminals located in local shops (including Co-op, Spar, Costcutter, Sainsburys Local, One Stop, Londis and thousands of independents) in all parts of the UK and Ireland. Terminals handle gas and electricity meter prepayments, cash bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, London Congestion Charges, TV licences and a wide variety of other payment types for all of the leading utilities, telecommunications suppliers and many consumer service companies. This network is used by consumers, free of charge, over 8 million times a week. The network has 99% population cover on a 1 mile urban or 5 miles rural measure;
• Multiple retailer connections into the electronic till systems of over 4,300 outlets in addition to the branded terminal outlets including BP, Somerfield and Superdrug for mobile top-ups and selected payments from the PayPoint range;
• An ATM network which has 2,016 ‘LINK’ branded machines across the UK, also typically in convenience stores; 
• PayPoint.net, an internet payment service provider, provides secure credit and debit card payments for over 4,800 web merchants linking into all the major UK acquiring banks; and
• Pay Store, a Romanian mobile top-up operator with over 4,000 outlets equipped with electronic terminals and 2,000 other retail outlets. A bill payment service has been added to increase the breadth of PayPoint’s offering in Romania, in line with the UK branded retail network.

PayPoint floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2004 and the company’s market capitalisation at 7 August 2008 was £447 million. PayPoint is widely recognised for its leadership in prepayment systems, smart technology and consumer service.

The New Football Pools:
The New Football Pools is owned by Sportech.  Liverpool based Sportech plc sprang from the takeover of Littlewoods gaming business by Edinburgh tech group Rodime in 2000.  It then bought Zetters in 2002 and added the Vernons business later last year.

Current Players: 700,000 customers play the Football Pools each week.

History of the Littlewood Pools:
In 1923, John Moores and two friends began their venture – handing out the first 4,000 Littlewoods Football Pools coupons outside Manchester United’s Old Trafford. By the 1930’s playing the Pools was a national pastime. Winning cheques have crossed the hands of more than 60 million people. The first £m payout was in 1986. The Pools Panel was formed during the artic winter of 1963, and 2 world cup winners – Gordon Banks and Roger Hunt – continue to sit weekly. In 1994, Littlewoods Football Pools became the first company to sponsor The FA Cup. In 2007 Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters Football Pools all came under the ownership of Liverpool based Sportech plc.