What is FPA?
The FPA is a collection of amateur football fans forecasting or 'predicting' games from English Premier League, English Championship, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa league, English FA Cup, English League Cup and a team local to where the FPA began, Gillingham FC, in Kent, England (English League One).

It began with one league for a trial period in 1979-1980, before any predicting or 'tipping' leagues existed, to our knowledge. So it is possibly the oldest and longest running football predictions competition in Britain, and possibly the world.

Over the years it has developed into four main leagues - three domestic and one UEFA; four cup competitions; and the inclusion of professional forecasters from the world of newspaper pools tipsters and TV football pundits. Since its start, many have tried to win the predictions leagues and cups, with the best part of one hundred having taken part at one time or another.

When we started back then there was no Internet; now, everyone it seems is an online tipster. You can get online predictions from football betting sites, join predictions competitions for money or just for fun, and use 'Tipping' forecasts or software promising to win you much on football betting. But apart from the fact we at FPA have been doing it longer than anyone else, year in year out our best have been better than all the rest. We consistently beat the professional newspaper pundits; we have beaten prediction software; online tipsters; and the BBC's own expert Mark 'Lawro' Lawrensen. Why? We don't have a magic formula, but we do know and love football - and we know how to predict successfully.

Since we introduced professional tipsters to go up against, in our 'Results League', we have had 40 seasons. Of those, professionals have won over our amateurs 6 seasons, and if we take off the season when two professionals tied with one of our amateurs, professionals have only won outright 5 seasons.

6 seasons means professionals have won only around 15% of all seasons and lost to us 85% of the other seasons, or only a 1 in 6.67 win rate

5 seasons means professionals have won only around 12.5% of all seasons outright, and lost to us 87.5% of the other seasons, or only a 1 in 8 win rate

Since then, we had a professional win our UEFA-based league, the European Super League. So technically that's 6 seasons, but all the above statistics refer to domestic wins i.e. English Premier League and Gillingham FC games.

The following is a list of the 28 professionals who have taken on the FPA members over the years. Winners in bold (some were shared titles):

Ceefax (UK TV)
Crossfire (UK TV)
Daily Express (UK newspaper)
Daily Mail (UK newspaper) 1 outright win
Daily Mirror (UK newspaper)
Daily Star (UK newspaper)
Evening Standard (UK newspaper)
Foot Stats (Online)
Fore Bet (Online)
Guardian (UK newspaper)
Independent (UK newspaper)
Kent Evening Post (UK newspaper, local)
Kent Today (UK newspaper, local)
Mail on Sunday (UK newspaper)
Mark 'Lawro' Lawrenson (UK BBC TV) 1 outright win
News of the World (UK newspaper)
Oracle (UK TV)
Predict Z (Online) 1 outright win, UEFA-based league
Rezilta (Online)
Soccer Vista (Online) 1 outright win
Sun (UK newspaper) 1 shared title, 2 outright wins
Sunday Express (UK newspaper) 1 shared title
Sunday Mirror (UK newspaper) 1 outright win
Sunday People (UK newspaper)
Sunday Telegraph (UK newspaper)
Sunday Times (UK newspaper)
Telegraph (UK newspaper)
Times (UK newspaper)
Today (UK newspaper)


We may be able to provide a predictions service from our best predictors of English Premier League, English domestic cups and UEFA Champions and Europa League games. This is something we are looking into. Please see the Contact page.

For a full history, see HISTORY.
For past seasons' records, see RECORDS.