Frequently Asked Questions about Vernons Easy Play

• Is Vernons Easy Play still going ?
  No, Vernons Easy Play ran from Saturday 15th August 1998 to Saturday 8th May 1999 (39 weeks) and then was shut down after a spectacularly poor run of sales. Players of the game have 180 days after the game date to claim their prizes (this is therefore 11.00pm GMT on Thursday 4th November 1999 for the 39th and final game). All further questions in this document make the assumption the game is still going :-)

• How do I play Vernons Easy Play ?
  You can only play Vernons Easy Play by filling in a playslip at your nearest National Lottery retailer and paying in cash for your selections. There is no subscription service.

• Can I play Vernons Easy Play from outside the UK or via the Internet ?
  No. The only way to play Vernons Easy Play is in person via a National Lottery retailer terminal.

• Why can't I pick my own Vernons Easy Play fixtures ?
  Because this would actually turn the game from being a lottery soccer game into a soccer pools game, with a change in the taxation (much higher for soccer pools than lotteries). Note how, like the main UK lottery, there's absolutely no skill whatsoever required with Vernons Easy Play (the fixtures are generated randomly), so it's quite rightly categorised as a lottery.

• Don't Vernons already do soccer pools though ?
  Not any more they don't ! Ironically, the main UK lottery was primarily responsible for turning Vernons Pools into a loss-making operation, so the logical step for Vernons was to shut down their pools division (which they did in February 1998) and collaborate with the architects of their demise, Camelot, in setting up a jointly-branded soccer lottery game. In case you're curious, Littlewoods Pools are still going and have about 80% of the UK soccer pools market.

• Why isn't the Vernons Easy Play fixture list the same as the soccer pools fixture list ?
  To be perfectly honest, there is no logical reason for this, although Vernons claims that the Pools Association owns the fixture list and that using that list would turn it into a pools game (I disagree with this !). It makes it very difficult for the average punter to know what fixtures are Vernons Easy Play fixtures and exactly how many Vernons Easy Play score draws there are. It means that soccer pools results are irrelevant to Vernons Easy Play (e.g. on the first Saturday, there were 8 Vernons Easy Play score draws, but 9 soccer pools score draws !), leading to major public confusion.

• How on earth do I find the Easy Play score draws from a while back ?
  Other than phoning Camelot's line (0845 9100000), looking at this Web site or at the official Easy Play Web site, you've got next to no chance of finding out old Vernons Easy Play score draw results. The reason is simple - there's not enough space in most media to publish many lines of fixtures going back several months ! This seems to be a huge weak link in the game and will inevitably result in an awful lot of unclaimed Vernons Easy Play prizes.

• Is there an official Vernons Easy Play Web site ?
  Not any longer. Amazingly, Vernons/Camelot actually released the easyplay.co.uk domain and it got snapped up by a porn site ! Mind you, that probably makes it more worth visiting now than when it was the official Vernons Easy Play Web site (which was dismal) :-)

• Is there a TV show associated with Vernons Easy Play ?
  BBC's Grandstand Saturday afternoon sports show used to read out the Vernons Easy Play score draw fixtures separately from the soccer pools fixtures, but seems to have mostly abandoned doing this now. However, although BBC teletext page 312 has the full Vernons Easy Play results later that evening, by Monday they are pulled and BBC teletext then has no pages at all containing the Vernons Easy Play results for the rest of the week !

• Why doesn't Vernons Easy Play use the Pools Panel for postponed matches ?
  This ties in with the fact that the Vernons Easy Play fixtures are different from the soccer pools fixtures, so the Pools Panel may not even judge an Vernons Easy Play fixture that was postponed. Note that Vernons Easy Play uses a "Random Fixture Result Generator" to fill in the results of postponed games.

• So what's wrong with Vernons Easy Play then ?
  Here's some things I've come up with:
  1. Lack of publicity of Vernons Easy Play results.
  2. No easy way (ha ha !) to find old Vernons Easy Play results other than actually phoning Camelot, checking this Web site or the official Easy Play Web site.
  3. Major public confusion over soccer pools fixtures vs. (the bizarrely different) Vernons Easy Play fixtures.
  4. Low jackpot prizes - you can't be a millionaire with this game unless there's a Super Draw.
  5. Playslip is virtually pointless (since you can't make your own selections, may as well just ask the retailer to give you a ticket) and quite restrictive (can only spend a max of £4 on it and only for up to 3 weeks in advance).

  

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