BY TIM PARSONS
A £50m prize by the Leave EU campaign for anybody who can predict the result of all 51 games in the Euro 2016 football championships is an interesting lottery draw.
It is impossible for anyone to predict with certainty the scores of all the game, but quite possible for someone to speculate the results and be lucky by chance. Football tournaments are often based on skill and quality, but also luck when it comes to high level international teams.
A £50,000 prize for the most most consecutive games correctly predicted will attract a number of football enthusiasts not normally interested in politics enough to participate in the referendum to take part. Vote Leave have taken out an insurance policy to fund the contest, dubbed a con by their rivals who view it as dubious strategy to obtain all the details of all participants who must give their private details to enter the contest. Entrants will be required to state whether they are more likely to back continued membership of The EU, or whether they want Britain to leave the EU, but the enticement of being an overnight multi-millionaire will be difficult for many ford core football fans to resist. The odds of correctly getting all the scores have been estimated at a billion to one.
Vote leave have publicly stated that £50m represents the amount Britain sends to the EU daily, a claim vigorously denied by supporters of the EU. executive director of ‘Britain stronger in the EU’ said the huge odds were similar to the vote leave camp providing a coherent vision ahead of the referendum of the state of Britain outside the EU.
Many football games can be predicted in terms of the probability of victory for various teams, but a precise prediction of game scores at the end of the game is factually impossible, and will largely be a lottery draw for all who participate. However, the prospect of extreme wealth will make the exercise more interesting than a gamble at the national lottery taken by millions of Brits weekly, despite the falling sales of lottery tickets since the new change introduced to the weekly national and European draws.
BETS
Bets on football games have gone on for decades in betting shops, but nothing of this sort of reward. Slim as the chances of anyone scooping the top prize, even the promise of £50,000 makes it an impossible gamble for the millions on football addicts in this country, many of whom will fancy their chances of coming up tops compared with their fellow football gamblers. The associated publicity will also add to the interest of the Euro 2016 games because of the very fact that there are some good predictors of football, partly based on the knowledge of the various teams and the random factor of chance and luck that follow some people. It will also raise awareness of the high importance associated with this historic referendum that cannot be overstated enough. The concern for the voices of many voters to go unheard because of the apathy of a lot of people towards politics has been major. This £50m prize offer for the successful prediction of the euro 2016 games, or the £50,000 for the highest consecutive games predictor must be acknowledged as a good referendum tactic which will deepen the interest in the referendum and call for both sides of the debates to put their best arguments forward before the big day of June 23rd arrives.
IMPASSIONED
The prize offer comes on the same day that David Cameron delivered an impassioned warning that Britain leaving the EU in a desperate attempt to curb immigration will ”wreck the economy”. In a bitter admission that latest official statistics of 333,000 net migrants in the last year were a disappointment, he said ”let me say to all those who want to leave the single market and cause all the damage it will do to jobs and to growth and to investment, I do not believe for one minute that the right way to control immigration is to wreck our economy”. Cameron’s speech was marked by conviction, one that shows his genuine concerns for our economy. He reminded the country that this warnings were not just coming from him, but by the International Monetary Fund(IMF) and the economic body, the OECD.
However, how far those warning go depend on how much the British public take to suggestions from the Leave group that Britain can still prosper without the help of The EU. The vote leave group have been full of strategies to get their way in this divisive referendum. Only yesterday, East London Boy band, E17, were the last of a string of music artists to cancel their plans to feature at Brexit gig in Birmingham organised by Nick Farage an this supporters. The government have tried their own strategy by spending £9m on leaflet to UK households to inform them of the dangers of leaving the EU, but how voters respond is yet to be seen. There is still a month to go, and this £50m prize which nobody is likely to win, may be the start of really pumping up interest.
