Calling all footie fans. If you think you could correctly predict a selection of tomorrow's Premier League football games then you could be in line for a £10 million jackpot, courtesy of an online football venture launched by David Galan and Scott Green.
The avid Arsenal fans are the brains behind Soccermillionaire.com - a prediction website where users pay £1.50 to play each week. Whoever earns the maximum points by predicting the right scores, in addition to answering six questions based on the fixtures correctly, will win the £10 million jackpot - the biggest prize in UK betting. Ex-West Ham manager Alan Curbishley is a pundit on the site and the duo have secured funding from private equity player John Lovering, chairman of pub chain Mitchells & Butlers. They have also secured media partnerships with several national newspapers.
Former investment banker Mr Galan, 36, tells People: "The reason why everyone is so interested in Soccer Millionaire is because the online gaming industry is a bit tired and we have come up with something that's a bit new.
"Football is massive in betting. Our business isn't heavy gambling - people are paying £1.50 a week rather than thousands of pounds." Mr Green, who used to work for Saatchi & Saatchi, says: "Everybody thinks they know football but there is nothing out there that tests their knowledge. I used to play a similar game in the office and it used to take people a long time to work out all the scores. I thought that this was something that could be done on the internet and for the mass market."
In addition to the correct predict-a-score game, there are several other games that users can take part in, including predicting the wrong results. You can also create private leagues. Around 8,000 punters signed up in the first week of the season.
