18+, UK only. New customers only. Full T&Cs below.
Updated: 29.07.2025
The Football Pools is a betting brand well-known throughout the UK. It has allowed the UK public to make predictions on score draws via its coupons since 1923, but it wasn't until 2018 that the famous brand launched a properly functioning online sports wager site. That was a big step into uncharted waters for the brand.
Competitions in online football pools let bettors in the UK wager on almost any sport, from football to rugby to horse racing, using computers and smartphones. The Pools is operated by OpCapita, which has the UK Gambling Commission's permission to run it for persons 18 and older. Furthermore, the online sportsbook offers in-play betting, whereas The Pools offers casino games and an interactive live casino.
The Pools gives away free bets. Sign up, make a first deposit, and then place some qualifying bets, and you can claim what they rather charmingly call a series of free wagers. But in order to reach this bet-without-risk stage, you must first place an actual bet with them. The free bets themselves are easy to get—I have done so in the past, with no nicking of fingers or whatnot required. But the entrance is odd: you cannot just walk into the free-bet fiesta (and I must say, that’s quite the delightful-sounding entrance) without first placing a bet.
To ensure you receive your starting offer at The Pools, create your account and place a qualifying bet of £10 on sports. Then, as a reward, you will be presented with £20 in free gambling credits—doled out, as it happens, in four £5 portions.
We cannot think of a better betting situation than one where you can actually get free betting. The Pools is comparatively good in laying out an offer of that sort. Of course, the first catch—"stick" sounds too accusatory— is that you have to put money in to get money that you can use to bet with. If betting is your thing and it fits in your budget, what The Pools lays in front of you is decent enough to make even your mother smile. Its offer—"Bet £20, Get £20 in Free Bets"—isn't great, but it makes no pretense of being rich in any sort of benevolence. You could use the free bets on any kind of wager that you may perceive and isn't absolutely nonsensical, with football being the dividing line.
The Pools sportsbook has several ongoing promotions for customers who love wagering on sporting events. If you are a fan of soccer or horse racing, you will find that The Pools has a particularly robust menu in these two areas. Besides what we have already mentioned, keep the Loyalty Club on your radar, as it is another way for The Pools to reward you.
The Pools offer plentiful chances to pump up your profit. You can uncover numerous boosts to the odds on selected football and sporting markets. They usually limit the max bet to £20, but most of the time, the deals are half-decent.
💰Acca Boost: Get a 50% boost on your winnings when you bet £10 on an acca containing 5 or more legs.
Daily Free Bets Every day, free bets are awarded to racing punters who make qualifying wagers. For every £20 you wager, you receive a £5 free bet. For every £10 you stake, you receive a £2 free bet. The Pools make it easy to see which races are eligible, checking on a race-by-race basis. Look out, too, during major racing events, as those appear to be prime times for securing free money. Again, the terms aren't all that mysterious: make a qualifying wager and hope your horse (and the horse's jockey) wins.
💰Question of the Day: Win a free bet by predicting the outcome of a selected match.
💰Extra Place Races: The Pools offers extra places on select each-way markets in its horse racing lobby.
Best Odds Guaranteed: A standard offer at all good racing betting sites, Best Odds Guaranteed is provided by The Pools. The site pays out at the better of the two prices you might have received (starting price or early price). Best Odds Guaranteed ensures you receive the higher payout.
Football Pools: As well as standard sports betting promos, The Pools offers a variety of pools offers you won’t find on any other site. Almost all agreements provide for no-cost gaming in a casino. Or, they provide for you to receive sporting good bonuses that don't cost the government any money every time you sign up for Pools competitions in person.
The Classic Pools have a jackpot of £3m, and entry is just £1. The Goal Rush contest may sound easy, but with a top prize of £1m, this contest requires you to pick 8 matches and predict that both teams will score. If you get it right, you share the prize with others who had the same winning prediction.
If being the one to forecast the precise scores is more your thing, then Footie5 is a fantastic competition for you and an avenue to claim £25,000. You participate by issuing 5 forecasts about the precise scores for certain selected matches.
Loyalty Club: The Pools operates a pretty standard sports betting loyalty program for its regular customers. You can earn a free bet if you place 10 or more qualifying bets. To qualify, these bets must be made at evens or higher and cannot include single horse racing bets.
The Pools present betting markets on over 20 diverse sports. Apart from football and horse racing, you can place a bet on anything from motorsport and rugby to tennis, mixed martial arts, and track and field. Find your preferred sports in the A-Z list in the lobby or by using the carousel at the top of the homepage. And if you want even more chances to win, the Pools also let you gamble on virtual sports, like greyhound racing, horse racing, and virtual football.
Football: Footie betting dominates the markets at The Pools. In the gaming lobby, you can place bets on 1X2, correct score, or any number of strange wagers. There is a handy Quick Link to the "Euro Elite Coupon," which showcases the biggest matchups of the weekend from England, Spain, or France. You can also access all Under/Over 2.5 Goals, Both Teams to Score, and Double Chance markets with the impressive carousel feature. Our review team found over 160 individual betting options on various contests, including Over/Under Goals, First Team to Score, and First/Last Goalscorer.
Horse Racing A sports betting website worthy of respect in the UK cannot be without extensive horse racing markets. Luckily, The Pools lists odds for each and every UK and Irish race I could seek out, from Goodwood and Newmarket to the Curragh and Down Royal. These days, most racecourses even have live streaming available through their own sites; to access the feeds through The Pools, just click on the relevant TV icon in the racecard. The Pools gives the details of every race that is arranged for the next two days and shows those that have just been completed and are in progress. When I looked at it, virtual races seemed to be happening every few minutes.
Cricket: Bet pre-match or in-running on the big Test matches, ODIs, or World Cups. You’ll also find interesting match-ups in competitions such as the Caribbean Premier League and IPL. US Sports: The Pools provides fixed odds not just in Moneyline, but also in other main types of bets, like Handicap and Totals. If you want to bet on a major US sport, like the NFL, NBA, or MLB, The Pools has you covered. They're even nice enough to list upcoming matchups in a neat calendar.
Markets on ice hockey, including that of the U.S. and Europe, and major league baseball are also offered by the Pools. One can bet outright on the division and world series winners, as well as on the teams in the series while the game is in play.
Other Sports: The Pools offers some decent betting on a range of alternative sports. The e-Sports profession encompasses a vast market with prospects tied to everything from worldwide contests for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) and DOTA 2 to League of Legends. They hand out prizes all over the world.
The Pools has a mobile betting app that is all about ease of use when it comes to making wagers from your portable device. The app, which you can get for either iOS (11.0+) or Android (5.1+), allows for quick access into the app and into your preferred betting or football pool contests with Touch ID. Once inside the app, you can place in-play wagers on not just football (which makes sense, given the name), but also on tennis and other sports. You can also make sure that you're not missing out on anything by opting into push notifications.
For a relatively new online bookmaker, The Pools offers some decent features to make your betting more seamless.
Create a Bet: The Pools offers a Create a Bet service on over a dozen football competitions, including the English Premier League and FA Cup. Develop a combo bet of your own, and get personalized odds on a variety of options, including: Double Chance/Half With Most Goals Match Result/First Goalscorer Match Result/Last Goalscorer.
Full Statistics: The Pools provides complete sport statistics on all games via its partnership with Statscore, one of the biggest data centers on the market. Locate face-to-face accounts, outcomes, and league standings for soccer and alternative athletic events.
In-Play Betting The Pools had us entranced with the in-play options. The ease with which one could toggle between game/event stats—shots on target, number of assaults—or keep up with off-the-field incidents (sendings-off, injuries, and the like) was impressive enough. But the real-time feed was the clincher. You could follow the match as you followed your bets.
Cash Out Cash-Out is offered on certain sports and markets. You will see a full list of Cash Out options when you make your bet. Settle your bet early and take an early profit before the game finishes. Partial Cash Out is not available on the site (sadly!).
The Pools offers a limited selection of deposit methods, but it allows safe transactions and it follows the KYC rules now standard in the industry. The Pools verifies the identities of new customers before letting them make their first deposit. The first step in this process is for the customers to send in scans of three personal documents. Only after The Pools has received and reviewed these will it go ahead and authorize the customer to make a first deposit. The three documents are: (1) a government-issued photo ID (like a driver's license or passport); (2) a document showing the customer's name and address (like a utility bill); and (3) a selfie of the customer holding the photo ID and the utility bill.
Available deposit methods (and minimum deposit)
The Pools sportsbook is permitted by law to offer online betting to customers throughout the United Kingdom. They hold a license from and are regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. When it comes to your personal data, they keep it safe and secure with SSL encryption. And when it comes to your money, all operating funds are kept separate from your account and jackpot funds.
Responsible gambling is just as important to The Pools as it is across the rest of the site. You can set limits on how much you can deposit that also allow for the limits to be raised if you find them too confining.
It is also possible to apply to totally self-exclude from your Pools betting account, or to take a time-out. The Pools will serve up reality checks to remind you just how long you have been betting online.
The Pools customer support can be contacted in a few different ways. There are many forms of communication to choose from—live chat, phone, email, or post—in order to get in touch with the support team. They are always available to offer assistance during a set of fairly broad hours: from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday; from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Friday; and from noon to 10:00 p.m. on Sunday. Post is not the quickest way to get in touch with customer support, but it is an option. One of the better ways to contact us is via email ([email protected]); however, the live chat channel is equally effective, much faster, and has no waiting times.
The Pools site was simple to navigate, and we hit no snags reaching our chosen betting markets. At the very top of the homepage, customers can select between American, Fractional, or Decimal odds—which is a nice touch. The Quick Links in the vault lobby get you to the major race and football markets, posthaste. Still, there’s no Favourites tab for punters on the website, which is a slight downside.
The betting slip is very user-friendly. When you select items in the lobby, they are added to the slip right away. The betting slip also instantly calculates all acca prices, and you can choose to accept or decline price changes as they appear in real time.
The Football Pools is a genuine British institution, which means the accompanying online sportsbook had to be on top of its game. Fortunately, the sports betting part does not disappoint: alongside jackpot Pools games, you can wager on loads of sports, including UK & Irish racing, football, and a full slate of US sports.
At The Pools, we are also big fans of the simple-to-follow loyalty program. Why mess around with loyalty points when you can just sign up, place your bets, and then receive free bets as a direct consequence? Sign up today and see for yourself why The Pools may soon be rated among the very best sports betting sites in the UK.
Absolutely! The Pools is run by The Football Pools Ltd, an outfit with decades of experience in the field. The sports betting website is licensed by the UK Gambling Commission.
The Pools works as a fully-fledged online sportsbook and as a prize pool betting service. Wager on thoroughbred racing, football, or a dozen other global sports. Bet on events in golf and American football.
The Football Pools contests occur frequently and they offer gigantic prizes. To win, players must guess how many matches will end in a draw and which teams will draw in a given round of football matches. Of course, this is a not particularly easy task. A score draw is something that most of us could not guess with any level of confidence.
Definitely. Open your betting account and get free bets when you fund your account and place your first eligible sports bet.
