It was something that was on my “things to do list” that thankfully I nivver got round to investigating. I’d automatically assumed the company were dishing prize money out on a weekly basis like the lottery on fantasy football type stuff.
That made me laugh so hard....crying
Sorry to hear you’re bankrupt
www.theguardian.com
Chance of the government to pay out?Football Index: Gambling Commission and FCA criticised over failure to act
Collapse of the so-called ‘football stock market’ in March left £90m of users’ stakes trapped and an independent report has been heavily critical of two regulators
Possible. It’s such an obvious ponzi, the dividends were generated by nothing underlying, so I’m amazed the regulator did nothing
Possible of a government pay out?
Posting this because there is a strong likelihood that their target audience is squarely the type of Pure Football poster who sadly can be roped into thinking this is actually a fair test of their knowledge. Unfortunately there is no mainstream coverage of the collapse of this to counter their aggressive advertising, and they are preying on average fans, rather than savvy investors.
I'm not invested in Football Index in any sense, but it is part of the general sports data world and so I've been aware of it's internal machinations for a long time and I admit I've always been a pessimist about what I consider a ponzi scheme. I think people should be aware that any money they put in will almost certainly be lost.
FI describes itself as a football stock market, where you buy the players at a price, and if they do well, the price goes up and you can then sell to others coming in at a higher price. If they do badly, you lose money on your initial investment.
Sounds kosher? It isn't. The problem with FI is that like any great ponzi scheme, it relies heavily on a huge number of ever-growing people buying the commodities all the time. If people stop buying players, FI users already invested are left with nobody to sell their shares to. For the first few years, FI had a 'quick sell' button that would sell the player back to FI for a lower price, but in Summer of last year, that was removed and things began to change quite a lot.
Since July, they have initiated at least 3 fundamental changes to the way 'dividends' (betting profits, effectively) are paid. They had a couple of 'reviews' where they artificially lowered the price of almost every player in the game. A player valued at £15 a share in May 2020 was reduced to around £5 per share in July. They then removed the 'Quick sell' button and effectively locked a solid proportion of their core users into a loss at that stage. Many of them chose to stay, hoping that the platform would take off again and their value would go back to what it was.
Of course, this hasn't happened. Their CEO left around Christmas, and last night at 8pm they announced a 30 day notice that they're having another 'Dividend Restructure'. To give you some idea of what this means in net terms, someone like Jadon Sancho who is clearly a superstar and very young (ie: an ideal buy, right?) was valued at £7 yesterday and today has a real value of just 45p.
In effect, Football Index are changing the terms of their customers' bets after the fact. Whatever your position on gambling, that is deeply unethical and should be a massive story, yet so far, there was just one story on the Guardian in January. Now, if you google FI, you'll see blogs that are paid by FI to do 'tips' and no coverage at all of any changes. Even their own website's 'news' section has zero coverage.
There are people on FI who have put tens of thousands in - some will undoubtedly have put even more in during the rush of 2018 when most players seemed to be making money. These are ordinary lads, they thought it was a no-loss proposition, or more importantly, they backed their own football knowledge. It's a complete f***ing tragedy that a lot of ordinary football fans will have lost all of their savings on this through no fault of their own.
Don't be one of them, please.
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Talksport used to have an employee of there’s on every Monday and Friday reviewing and previewing the results and fixtures and speculating who’s prices look like they would rise and fall. Dodgy as fuck.
