Anyone affected by this ?

[Waconda]

Norwich man suicidal after losing £98k in Football Index | Eastern Daily Press (edp24.co.uk)

I heard the adds on Talk Sport and though it was an interesting concept but couldn't see how it could work.

Many ripped off apparently.

[Davefevs]

From reading stuff around the time it crashed, it appears they changed the way the dividends worked (and calculation method), some people got out quickly and that left them with liquidity issues and therefore player values dropped.

I’m a 5p accumulator type gambler, so something like this wouldn’t appeal to me, but I can see why it might to some.  They’ve been let down big time.  

[Eddie Hitler]

Nobody in the £98k bracket anyway:

 

 

It's easy to say that it was never going to work with the benefit of hindsight but then you have tech companies like Uber losing billions each year but with a high market value or crypto currencies like Bitcoin with zero intrinsic value yet some people have made loads on them.

 

[Bristol Rob]

I looked at it when it launched, and didn't understand how they made any money so gave it a swerve.

With a match bet, you expect that at full time the game will end in one of 3 ways, h/a/d. Either you win or the bookie wins.

With share ownership, the bet didn't have an obvious close point, which is why I found it confusing.

[Waconda]

15 minutes ago, Bristol Rob said:

I looked at it when it launched, and didn't understand how they made any money so gave it a swerve.

With a match bet, you expect that at full time the game will end in one of 3 ways, h/a/d. Either you win or the bookie wins.

With share ownership, the bet didn't have an obvious close point, which is why I found it confusing.

Exactly.

[Bristol Rob]

19 minutes ago, VT05763 said:

Exactly.

I could only assume that funds to pay people who were 'up' and wanted to cash out came from people who had either recently re-deposited or just joined.

Just sounded like a pyramid scheme.

There was probably a lot more to it than that, but that was my first impression.

At least Crypto has a market cap.

[richwwtk]

1 minute ago, Bristol Rob said:

Just sounded like a pyramid scheme.

There was probably a lot more to it than that, but that was my first impression.

No, I think that pretty much is what it was.

[Sir Geoff]

35 minutes ago, Bristol Rob said:

I looked at it when it launched, and didn't understand how they made any money so gave it a swerve.

With a match bet, you expect that at full time the game will end in one of 3 ways, h/a/d. Either you win or the bookie wins.

With share ownership, the bet didn't have an obvious close point, which is why I found it confusing.

Fairly easy to understand. You bought shares in players. The better the player the more expensive the shares. If the player has a good week (scores a hat trick, gets transferred for gazzillions then his share price goes up. You either cash in your shares for profit or keep them and hope they continue to increase.

Or you take a punt on someone like Alex Scott who's share price would have been about 5p 18 months ago. Now would have been about 50p / £1 so you wait a couple of years for him to be sold then cash in when his price soars.

The problem this company had was they paid out dividends on your shares from their profits. I have no idea how this worked as I never bought into it, but it was the paying of these dividends that brought them down.

From memory Football Index was owned by 2 or 3 people from Wiltshire (possibly Chippenham).

[Bristol Rob]

3 minutes ago, Sir Geoff said:

Fairly easy to understand. You bought shares in players. The better the player the more expensive the shares. If the player has a good week (scores a hat trick, gets transferred for gazzillions then his share price goes up. You either cash in your shares for profit or keep them and hope they continue to increase.

Or you take a punt on someone like Alex Scott who's share price would have been about 5p 18 months ago. Now would have been about 50p / £1 so you wait a couple of years for him to be sold then cash in when his price soars.

The problem this company had was they paid out dividends on your shares from their profits. I have no idea how this worked as I never bought into it, but it was the paying of these dividends that brought them down.

From memory Football Index was owned by 2 or 3 people from Wiltshire (possibly Chippenham).

The point I'm making is that I never understood how Index MADE a profit, other than robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[Olé]

With shares the asset has a real and residual value over time linked to the value of the company which has real buildings, real people and real profits - these didn't, they were made up, they had no real value, they were "synthetic"

But even with synthetic derivatives (where trading platforms sell bets on shares or other investments) the platform can cover the bet and value by holding some investment in the real asset (ie buying those shares) - this couldn't, it had absolutely nothing to do with the players value and gained nothing from changes in that value

And even then taking that all into account and falling into obviously the highest risk class of "investment", ie buying into effectively a token of no real value (like Bitcoin*), this went a ridiculous step further of paying dividends - at that point this stepped into Ponzi / Pyramid scheme territory and was simply demonstrating an incentive to participate by paying a small proportion of the market using money gathered from new entrants (dividends are typically paid from the profits generated by a company using its assets, but remember these guys had no assets nor a sustainable way to create profits). 

It was a house of cards and the biggest crime is the Gambling Commission or the FCA were completely asleep at the wheel and did nothing.

*unrelated but Bitcoin I would argue has achieved some notional residual value and asset class based on its accessibility and utility in certain transactions/use cases (ie you can now invest in it through major platforms like PayPal or spend with it on certain other platforms), which creates some demand and value. But I use the example for perspective only as Bitcoin is still seen as one of the highest risk investments around but even then, it has never offered dividends and its' value is not linked to totally unrelated assets it had no way of monetizing - in this context FootballIIndex was off the scale of risk and unsustainability.

[Eddie Hitler]

46 minutes ago, Bristol Rob said:

The point I'm making is that I never understood how Index MADE a profit, other than robbing Peter to pay Paul.

They charged commission on player sales which was meant to exceed the amount that they paid out in dividends.

When a new CEO took over they realised that it wasn't anywhere near doing that so they slashed the dividends paid to a level where the commission would cover it; though slashing the dividends meant the value of the "shares" plummeted and it collapsed.

The model could have worked but without the partial Ponzi aspect the returns would have been a lot lower so much less money would have been invested.

[petehinton]

51 minutes ago, Eddie Hitler said:

They charged commission on player sales which was meant to exceed the amount that they paid out in dividends.

When a new CEO took over they realised that it wasn't anywhere near doing that so they slashed the dividends paid to a level where the commission would cover it; though slashing the dividends meant the value of the "shares" plummeted and it collapsed.

The model could have worked but without the partial Ponzi aspect the returns would have been a lot lower so much less money would have been invested.

was on FI since mid-2018 or so, and they knew for about a yearish before Adam Cole stepped down that it was going down the pan fairly rapidly. God knows why the guy who agreed to step up accepted it, as it stinks of Cole trying to do a runner basically. If it's properly investigated (unlikely), it will probably end up in jailtime for some of them.

[Waconda]

41 minutes ago, petehinton said:

was on FI since mid-2018 or so, and they knew for about a yearish before Adam Cole stepped down that it was going down the pan fairly rapidly. God knows why the guy who agreed to step up accepted it, as it stinks of Cole trying to do a runner basically. If it's properly investigated (unlikely), it will probably end up in jailtime for some of them.

it will probably end up in jailtime for some of them.

In todays corrupt society it depends on who they know or who "Daddy" is mates with.

Spivs are in charge.

[Bristol Rob]

2 hours ago, VT05763 said:

it will probably end up in jailtime for some of them.

In todays corrupt society it depends on who they know or who "Daddy" is mates with.

Spivs are in charge.

Happened over a year ago, the police won't investigate.

Or so the Tory party would have you believe.

[The Dolman Pragmatist]

Greed has its consequences.