The Development of the Football Pools in Britain during the Inter-War Years, 1918-1939, with particular reference to Littlewoods

Abstract

Chapter 1. Introduction
People have always gambled- the rich often through boredom and the poor for financial gain – on horses, dogs, cock fighting, bear baiting, hare coursing, pedestrianism, bare knuckle fighting, cards, boxing, coin throwing and dice.¹ In the inter-war period of the twentieth century an entirely new type of national gambling option developed - the football pools. The growth of the football pools during the inter-war years was phenomenal. In 1923 it was a localized product, based around town and regional newspapers, by the late 1930s eight to ten million adults participated weekly to attempt to win life-changing amounts of money. This was now a new dynamic industry that employed tens of thousands of urban workers, mostly women. The aim of this study is to assess how this transformation came about and the role of the structural developments and broader changes in British society during this period and the specific entrepreneurial expertise of a small number of pools promoters, particularly the Moores brothers who controlled Littlewoods. It is clear that the growth of the pools and, specifically Littlewoods, was due to a combination of structural factors – changes and expansion in leisure, the growth of football, the influence of the press and the wireless and the reduction in power of the disparate elements of the anti-gambling movement. Littlewoods rose to pre-eminence due to the astute nature of the Moores brothers who introduced a modernist outlook to their business with advertising and promotional techniques, created an imagined community and introduced Taylorist and Fordist management structures. The epitome of the growth and development of the pools industry was in the core clash known as the Pools War in 1936. This conflict pitched the younger, modernist pools promoters against the older, conservative anti-gambling elements and the result of this standoff shaped the  development of the pools for a considerable period up to and after World War Two...

Date of Award	11 Mar 2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Keith Laybourn (Main Supervisor)