Zetters to use spread bets in lottery fight

Zetters Group, the football pools company, is considering launching a sports spread-betting service in its fight against the National Lottery.

Spread bets would be made on a traditional pools form and would enable punters to bet, for example, on how many goals will be scored in total in a football match or over a season by a football team.

Money is made by estimating whether the amount of goals will be above or below the spread given by the company.

Although spread betting is most popular among City traders and affluent gamblers, Zetters Group business development director Graham Doyle says sports spread bets could be placed for as little as 1p to make the service accessible.

The plans follow the company’s launch last week of IFX Financial, a financial spread-betting company aimed at the upper end of the market.

Doyle says: “We’ve moved into financial spread betting but the marketing principles can also be applied to sports betting. It’s something we are considering.”

The company has 70,000 weekly football pools customers. But its latest financial results for the year ending March 31, show that the National Lottery has affected profits, with the company making a loss of &£672,000 on a turnover of &£10.3 m.

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