PredictTheScore is a website that runs football based prediction games where you can test your knowledge, skill and luck by battling it out with like-minded individuals for prizes. As of July 2006 membership and entry to the games is free - PredictTheScore is run by us, from our own pockets, in our spare time. The aim is to grow the site until we can attract sponsorship and tie-ups that will allow us to break even.

Up to the end of the 2008/09 season we had launched five competitions:

Prediction Premiership is a league competition, where players predict the scores of English Premier League games on a weekly basis, and score points for accuracy. As with all PredictTheScore games, they can pick up bonus points by selecting five players who they think will score goals - points are awarded based on the risk of that prediction.

The FAntasy Cup (formerly The CreamFAce Cup) was a knock-out cup competition, where players predict the scores of FA Cup games, again scoring points for accuracy. The original format was a horribly convoluted knock-out system, but since season two, to progress from round to round you have to finish in the top 50% of players. Originally (due to not having easy ways of compiling lower division squad lists) players picked teams who would score goals (instead of players) - lower division teams being worth more than those from the Premier League. After a successful experiment for the semi finals of Season 3, as of Season 4 players picked players for bonus points in the same fashion as Prediction Premiership.

The PTS World Cup ran during the summer of 2006 and again in 2010. It was also a league competition with essentially the same rules as Prediction Premiership.

EuroPredictTheScore was basically the same competition, but for Euro 2008. If we're still going we'll revive it for 2012.

Eurostars was a knock-out competition, launched in 2008/09, where players predict the scores of UEFA Champions League games, from the group stages onwards. Its format was based around the group stage/knockout model of the Champions League itself - basically a refined version of the original CreamFAce Cup format. But this one worked.

For the 2009/10 season we expanded our range and introduced new competitions, based on the classic Prediction Premiership format: Prediction Championship (for the English Championship), SuperScots (for the Scottish Premier League), Viva La Liga! (for the Spanish Liga Primera División) and Prediction Italia (for the Italian Serie A).

In 2010/11 we decided that was a bit much, and scaled down our repertoire to Prediction Premiership, Prediction Championship, SuperScots and The FAntasy Cup.

For 2011/12 we looked at who had played the other competitions and realised that, essentially it was all the same people and that Prediction Premiership was really the heart of what we do. So this season (our seventh!) we're only running a Premier League based competition, and we're calling it PredictTheScore because, frankly, it saves confusion.

Once upon a time there were two Marketing Managers who both worked for a multinational supermarket chain. They sat opposite each other and would often while away the hours talking about non-work-related matters, in particular football. In July of 2005, they got talking about the upcoming season and fantasy football games that they might decide to play, and came to the conclusion that they could do a great job running their own and roping in their friends and colleagues to play.

After bouncing around some ideas in the staff canteen, they decided that predicting scores would provide a truer test of skill, and devised the format for a predictions league. It was launched, as Prediction Premiership, and was originally aiming for 20-30 players within the office, being run by email, spreadsheets and an Access database that they threw together one lunchtime.

Soon it became obvious that there was more demand that they had anticipated and that to run such an operation from their work email accounts probably contravened the odd company policy so they decided to set up a website.

Those Marketing Managers were called Phil Oddy and Bambos Christophi, and that website eventually became PredictTheScore. The rest is history.

If you want to help promote us, send us some money, blag us some prizes or help out with aspects of running or improving the site you are more than welcome. We're a bit rubbish at many of these things. In return, you can have a shout out on Twitter, a free ad if you have something you want to promote - anything we can offer, basically. Except cash. We haven't got any of that.

To Susan and Andria (and Georgina, Sam and Juliana), for putting up with excessive time spent at the computer, obsessive Saturday afternoons spent providing up-to-the-minute score updates and really flimsy excuses for hogging the TV to watch even more football.

To Hugh, our former boss, for his faith in the fact that we could continue to do a good job whilst simultaneously planning PTS's world-wide launch.

And to everyone, sadly now too numerous to mention, who has contributed along the way with ideas and support, without whom we would still be sixty spreadsheets and a database.