The Pools

About The Pools

I can remember as a young child in the 1980’s bellowing to my parents that the “Littlewoods man” was at the front door (I’m showing my age here). The aim was to find score draws from various football matches on the weekend. You would get points for your selections with the best player or players winning the top prize. The Pools popularity declined in the mid 1990’s with the introduction of the National Lottery and high street bookmakers offering a variety of football bets with more chances to win. But this national treasure didn’t lay down and die off completely. After being bought and sold by numerous companies it was relaunched online in 2008 as The New Football Pools which attracted a new generation of players.

Let’s fast forward to the present day. The Pools is owned and operated by a UK based company, The Football Pools Limited and celebrated its 100th birthday in 2023 and oh my, has it evolved over the last few years. Freshly upgraded for 2025, alongside their classic, now retro pools products you will find everything a gaming provider can deliver all under one umbrella including a sportsbook, casino, live casino and lotto products. So let’s take a closer look at the oldest gambling institution within the UK.

The Pools platform is of a simple design, a bright white with blues and black to break it up a little. My first impression was how particularly user friendly the site is, although basic everything was very neat, tidy and quite self explanatory. With the casino or games as they call it as their homepage, other categories run across the top including links to their Jackpots, (which is explained in more detail below) Sportsbook, Promotions and your account area. Within your account area are more links to customer support and your rewards.

Getting Started

The Pools has a great welcome offer rewarding new customers with 100 free spins when they deposit and wager £10 on slot games. You will receive your free spins the following day and they are all wager free. This delivers fantastic value and you can claim this by tapping or clicking on the above link. The sign up process was quite simple and took me a couple of minutes. They will also send you an email asking you to verify your email address before you play. There are options to set deposit limits and reality checks before you begin your player experience. At the time of writing you can only deposit via a debit card or Paypal. The Pools will try and verify your account when you sign up. However, you could be asked to verify your account by uploading the necessary documents within their verification area which is in your account section, in line with Gambling Commission requirements.

Membership at The Pools

Before I talk about The Pools membership schemes, I would like to stress that you don’t have to be a member at all to enjoy what is on offer within this platform. You only need to be a member if you would like to participate in using the products within their Jackpot area, As you’d expect, the Football Pools get pride of place. This 100 year old and thoroughly British product which can be played for just £10 per month is now available to play online with a whole new generation of players enjoying the fun of predicting score draws each week.

There are 3 different tiers of membership and in my humble opinion they all offer good value for money depending on what you’re after:-

• Sports Membership is £10 per month for this you get 10 Classic Pools Entries. (which has a £3M Jackpot)
  A free bet every Friday plus various offers and promotions.
• Lotto Membership is £15 per month for this you get 10 lucky clover lucky dips (which has a £1M Jackpot)
  Free spins every Friday plus various offers and promotions.
• Sports Plus Membership is £20 per month for this you get 10 Goal Rush Entries.(which has a £1M Jackpot) A free bet every Friday plus various offers and promotions. Goal Rush is basically predicting games in which both football teams score a goal.

You can be a member of one or all three and this offers an unique betting experience only offered by The Pools played with a subscription. It also gives you entry to monthly and quarterly prize draws plus access to competitions and giveaways.

Sports Betting at The Pools

It’s great to see The Pools offer the all round gaming experience. They have had a sportsbook for a number of years and although their current sportsbook isn’t all whistles and bells it does offer a good stable platform to have a flutter on all your favourite sports. The layout is straightforward with nice bold tiles showing the odds with all the major football leagues and competitions covered . A great feature here is that you can highlight your go-to sports by clicking or tapping on the star symbol and adding them to your favourites. They offer competitive odds especially on horse racing and provide a good live betting in-play area. The Pools on occasion do a number of price boosts on popular football markets – these are mainly at the weekend or within big tournaments. Other features at the time of writing include the ability to cash out, boosted winning on accumulators and a good weekly bet builder offer, where 2 bet builders get you a free bet.

Slot Games at The Pools

Under the games category, this platform really shows its depth with over 1000+ games at your disposal. This part of their site is definitely not an afterthought with a huge range of popular games from more than a dozen different providers. Recently added titles, which are added constantly include, John Hunter and Galileo’s Secret by Pragmatic Play and Hounds of Hell by Hacksaw Gaming. Popular titles at the moment there are Mining Pots of Gold and Gold Blitz Ultimate both by Games Global. The navigation and usability is first class; the games are grouped together in lots of helpful ways either by provider, by theme (sports games), by game mechanics (free spins and Megaways) and by promotion (Pragmatic Play’s Drops & Wins games). A great added feature is you can also use the search function to find games by name or by the provider.

So with the site that has pretty much everything, The Pools didn’t forget about the Progressive Jackpots enthusiasts. There aren’t that many but you have a choice of about 20+ that consists of Mega Moolah and Wowpot titles.

Other Games at The Pools

Alongside their variety of games is a lobby area with some live casino options. Categories include Roulette, Blackjack and Game shows. All of these games are provided by Pragmatic Play, with the choice rather limited compared to some. There is also one Baccarat table but it is better than nothing. The fact of the matter is The Pools has covered all avenues, even if it’s spread a little thin when it comes to these games.

Although there is unfortunately currently no Bingo on offer at The Pools, they do alternatively deliver 60+ Slingo games which although not the same combine slots and bingo for a fun change. Even better still there are a handful of video bingo options in the instant win section which is home to some scratch cards and crash games too.

Other Things to Consider

With an attractive welcome offer of wager free spins as mentioned before The Pools does have a handful of ongoing casino promotions. These include a weekly slots club which rewards wager free spins for when you play selected games, Pragmatic Play’s Drops and Wins and weekly tournaments with cash prizes. There are also daily Free To Play areas that have games where you can win free spins or free bets, the games are called Mega Spins and Football Squares.

In this day and age it’s important to be able to access everything by the means of a mobile browser and all aspects of this casino platform is most definitely available on the go. I found that both user platforms reflected each other with usability a strong factor especially when it comes to mobile use. Unfortunately at the time of writing there isn’t an app available but to be honest The Pools runs fantastically without one.

Customer service is vitally important and here you have peace of mind that you are dealing with an operation with 100+ years experience. (you don’t say that very often) The Pools offer a high standard and have a 24/7 live chat function which you can access via the blue bubble. Alongside this is a clear FAQ section and further options to send an email if you have any further questions or queries.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed all aspects of this platform, if there was one thing I could change it would be to add more game show choices, but it definitely isn’t a deal breaker that’s for sure. It has everything under one umbrella and delivers this extremely well including a well stocked slots library. All this and the option to enjoy playing The Pools again which is of course a British institution. Good luck finding those draws.

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