A football pool doesn't really need much. A group of friends, family members or colleagues, a few matches to predict, and someone who gets just a little too excited about sharing the standings after the first round.
Still, a few simple additions can make your pool a lot more fun. Not by adding all kinds of complicated rules, but by creating a bit more friendly competition and giving everyone something to talk about.
So, planning a football pool soon? Try a few of these ideas.
1. Get a trophy
The winner deserves a trophy, of course. Preferably one that's slightly too big, too shiny or just plain ugly.
Turn it into a travelling trophy and add the winner's name after every EURO, World Cup or other tournament. After a few years, you'll have your own little hall of fame, and winning the trophy becomes more meaningful every time.
Not into trophies? Agree that the winner gets to choose the restaurant for a group dinner instead. It doesn't have to be too serious. Bragging rights are usually enough.
2. Don't forget about last place
The top of the table usually gets plenty of attention. But things can be just as exciting at the bottom.
Introduce a wooden spoon for whoever finishes last, for example. A particularly ugly trophy works very well here too.
You could also make it a tradition that the person who finishes last has to organise the next pool or arrange the dinner after the tournament.
That way, there's still something to play for even if two terrible rounds have already put first place well out of reach.
3. Add a few bonus questions
Besides predicting individual matches, you can ask a few questions about the tournament as a whole.
Who will become champion? Who will be the top scorer? How far will the Netherlands go? Which teams will reach the semi-finals? Who will be the surprise of the tournament?
The nice thing about these questions is that many of them aren't decided until late in the tournament. You might have a terrible start with your match predictions and still make a comeback later on.
And, of course, they give you plenty of material for reminding someone months later that they genuinely predicted England to win the whole thing.
4. Create teams within your pool
Playing with a large group? Try dividing everyone into teams as well.
At work, you could have different departments compete against each other. Sales versus Marketing, the Netherlands versus Belgium, or the Rotterdam office versus the Amsterdam office. With friends, you could create teams based on couples, families or simply draw random teams.
You're basically playing two competitions at once. Everyone wants to finish as high as possible individually, but nobody wants to be the person dragging their team down.
Golero lets you create teams within a pool, so you don't have to keep a separate table yourself.
5. Build some history
If you regularly play a pool together, it would be a shame to forget everything as soon as a tournament ends.
Keep the final standings or make a list of previous winners. Combine that with a travelling trophy and, after a few tournaments, you'll naturally start building some history.
People tend to remember an unusually good tournament for a surprisingly long time.
A spectacularly bad one too.
6. Make the smaller rivalries matter
In a large pool, you might find yourself sitting in 38th place with no realistic chance of catching the leader. That doesn't mean the fun is over.
Where's your brother in the standings? Your colleague? Your partner? That one friend who claimed beforehand that they "basically watch football every week"?
Those are often the positions people care about most.
This can be especially fun in a company pool. Instead of only looking at the individual standings, you could also see which department is performing best overall.
7. Watch a match together
It sounds obvious, but this is probably one of the easiest ways to make a pool more enjoyable.
Pick a few big matches and watch them together. At someone's house, at the office or in the pub.
As soon as everyone has predicted a different result, you suddenly watch the game in a completely different way. A seemingly meaningless goal in the 89th minute can make half the group very happy and the other half extremely annoyed.
That's exactly what makes a football pool fun.
8. Share the best (and worst) predictions
There's always at least one prediction that nobody can quite believe someone got right.
One person is the only one to predict 3–0, and it actually finishes 3–0. Or someone confidently goes for 4–1, only to see their team go 2–0 down after twenty minutes.
Share those predictions in your group chat or around the office. There's no need to attach extra points or prizes to them. A bit of bragging or friendly teasing is usually more than enough.
9. Throw in the occasional football trivia question
Not everything has to be about predicting scores.
During the tournament, you can also throw in a few football trivia questions about players, countries, previous tournaments or unusual football facts.
Which country has won the most World Cups? Which player scored the most goals at a single World Cup? Who can recognise a player just from their career history?
This works particularly well when you're watching a match together. Ask a few questions before kick-off, reveal the answers at half-time, and then everyone can pretend they knew them all along.
That's also why trivia is one of the game modes in Golero.
10. Above all, keep it simple
This might be the most important one.
A pool should be fun to join, not feel like admin. Nobody wants to open a spreadsheet after every round just to work out how many points they've scored.
Make sure people can join easily, enter their predictions quickly and see where they stand without any hassle.
That's exactly why we built Golero. You create a pool, invite your friends, family or colleagues, and Golero keeps track of the standings for you.
That leaves you, as the organiser, free to focus on more important things.
Like finishing above your friends.
A football pool should mainly be about having fun together
Of course, you can simply predict the matches and see who has the most points at the end. There's nothing wrong with that.
But it's usually everything around the predictions that makes a pool memorable. The group chat exploding after an unexpected goal. A colleague suddenly becoming deeply invested in a match between two countries they'd normally never watch. Or that travelling trophy that's somehow made it through three World Cups.
That's what a good football pool does: it makes every match just a little more interesting because you're playing along together.
Ready to start your own football pool?
With Golero, you can easily create a pool for friends, family or colleagues. Invite your group, enter your predictions and Golero will keep track of the standings for you.