Football Index - A warning/cautionary tale for football fans.

To be fair that's not always the case. I think some are seeing it a bit like a betfair. They're a gambling company, they make money, but because you're betting against other players, you can in theory set the price, and they just take a relatively small commission, it's seen as one you could potentially do okay on, if you really knew what you were doing. Most will still lose money, but the odds there are almost always a fair bit better than you'll find at any bookie. If you see this as a fair platform where its about your ability to recognise a good player before others, then it's a bit shan if they suddenly, seemingly for no reason, slash the value of your "investments". Because that's the other thing it's seen as being like, the stock market. Again you know a lot of people do lose money, but it's not like a pure gambling site where everyone (over time) does. I'm not really up on the stock market but I've certainly never heard of all company stock prices randomly being slashed across the board

It's certainly not unknown for virtually all shares to fall simultaneously (that's exactly what a stock market crash is). This is more akin to the Stock Market closing for a day and unilaterally cutting every price on the market
 


I put £20 in when it was first launched. Used to tinker about with it and was up to £60 last time I checked a few months ago. It’s now £9 due to whats happened. Obviously immaterial compared to some others but what they have done is tantamount to theft. Are they not subject to the usual regulation?

I believe they will be mate. I'm hoping a few more media outlets pick up on this. When it goes bust (which must be weeks away at this point), hopefully there will be some kind of legal action. It doesn't pass the eye test, think even with their terms and conditions they'll have a job proving this wasn't fraud to be taking new money yesterday while knowing it was going to be fundamentally changed.
 
I believe they will be mate. I'm hoping a few more media outlets pick up on this. When it goes bust (which must be weeks away at this point), hopefully there will be some kind of legal action. It doesn't pass the eye test, think even with their terms and conditions they'll have a job proving this wasn't fraud to be taking new money yesterday while knowing it was going to be fundamentally changed.

Even the Serious Farce Office might be able to make that stick.
 
What’s the chances of a company buying them out?

None. I know people who make these deals happen and they are a lost cause. An investor now would potentially be taking on big legal issues and from what I've heard, a company leveraging every penny into advertising to scam new users through the door to cover short term losses.
 
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I could've so easily got sucked in. People tend to trust brands that are commercially visible and reputable. Never even considered that the value of these players is not objective and subject to huge levels of manipulation by the site itself. This is where the trust comes in. I wouldn't have even thought it likely that they'd be so brazen.
 
20k? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
A fool and his money....

Think that's a tad unfair mate. Those people haven't lost money by 'gambling' in my view. The bets they made were often the winning ones when they placed them, they have just been devalued by the company changing the platform to make those investments worthless.

Worth remembering that between 2016-2020 it was likely that a lot of the people putting hundreds in and turning it into thousands would never have expected the platform to annihilate their portfolios whenever things got sketchy. I can definitely understand how someone who had proven adept at picking these player stocks would feel confident enough to put more money in.
 
Think that's a tad unfair mate. Those people haven't lost money by 'gambling' in my view. The bets they made were often the winning ones when they placed them, they have just been devalued by the company changing the platform to make those investments worthless.

Worth remembering that between 2016-2020 it was likely that a lot of the people putting hundreds in and turning it into thousands would never have expected the platform to annihilate their portfolios whenever things got sketchy. I can definitely understand how someone who had proven adept at picking these player stocks would feel confident enough to put more money in.
I disagree. It was obviously built on sand. If you’ve put 20k in you should understand the risk at least
 
I signed up a while back when they had an offer of whack £500 in and use it risk free for 30 days - if it went above that you kept the profit - think i made about £50 but just couldnt see how you could do it long term so withdrew - have heard some pretty dodgy stuff about them over the last year so gave them a wide berth since.
 
Think that's a tad unfair mate. Those people haven't lost money by 'gambling' in my view. The bets they made were often the winning ones when they placed them, they have just been devalued by the company changing the platform to make those investments worthless.

Worth remembering that between 2016-2020 it was likely that a lot of the people putting hundreds in and turning it into thousands would never have expected the platform to annihilate their portfolios whenever things got sketchy. I can definitely understand how someone who had proven adept at picking these player stocks would feel confident enough to put more money in.
Many of them will have made profits in the past but just lost what they currently have in. Surely a lad who has 20k in has been withdrawing some of he has been doing it a long time.
 
They had a risk free 30 days a couple of years back. I stuck £200 in to have a go as it interested me, but the more I looked around, the rules weren't straight forward, the best players weren't worth the most money etc. It felt more like gambling than the crossover with investing that I originally thought it was so I withdrew and didn't go back.

I feel sorry for those losing money, but people like the bloke losing £20k should have been far more aware of the risks involved before spending so much, especially as people are suggesting they've done something similar once or twice before. Alarm bells should have been ringing when they changed the rules in their favour even once!
 
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.

In short, they're digital snake oil salesmen looking to fleece the naive punter!
 
I made a few thousand profit on there, but got out at the right time. In my opinion its biggest downfall has been a clear lack of how to take the product forward and some very iffy appointments in senior positions.

Not going to lie, had a lot of fun for a few years, shame for all those with money tied in, but the warning signs have been there for a very long time.
 
In short, they're digital snake oil salesmen looking to fleece the naive punter!
This^^^
I think Arthur Daley was the first character I heard use the term 'investment' to describe a bet. 'Investing' in sport is at its core an emotional investment based on hopes and feelings (in this case the feeling that you can spot a good player ahead of the curve). My emotional investment of supporting the Lads for 60 odd years is certainly built on hopes and feelings.
But when I spend hard cash to make a 'investment' I want something in my hand- a key, a legal document, something material, not a set of rules somebody else can change on a whim. Naive punters indeed.
 
I seem to remember about a year ago a bunch of people were saying how it was obviously a ponzi scheme guaranteed to collapse at some point. They got absolutely hammered on social media for it by people who were adamant they'd found an easy way to make money.
As far as pomzis go this had a long Run.
 
This^^^
I think Arthur Daley was the first character I heard use the term 'investment' to describe a bet. 'Investing' in sport is at its core an emotional investment based on hopes and feelings (in this case the feeling that you can spot a good player ahead of the curve). My emotional investment of supporting the Lads for 60 odd years is certainly built on hopes and feelings.
But when I spend hard cash to make a 'investment' I want something in my hand- a key, a legal document, something material, not a set of rules somebody else can change on a whim. Naive punters indeed.

I remember a bookies in Brum in the late 70's with a shop sign of Charlie Jones (or whatever his name was) - Sporting Investments.
 

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