The man who turned a 'precarious' gambling hobby into a retail empire
In short: In 1922, three friends sat in a quiet cable office and decided to disrupt the football betting market. They risked their own savings on a venture that nearly collapsed twice. From those damp-handed initial bets grew one of Britain's most recognizable retail brands and a legendary football legacy.
John Moores' rise began in the early 1920s with the creation of the 'Littlewood Football Pool.' Alongside friends Colin Askham and Bill Hughes, Moores sought to improve upon a struggling betting model devised by John Jervis Barnard. They faced immediate hurdles: they were forbidden from having outside employment by the Commercial Cable Company, forcing them to keep their venture secret. They invested £50 each—a significant sum at the time—and initially saw disastrous results, with only 35 coupons returned from the first 4,000 distributed at Old Trafford.
The business nearly folded during the 1924–25 season when it was still losing money despite a total investment of £200. While his partners wanted to quit, Moores stayed the course, famously encouraged by his wife’s advice to be 'haunted by failure rather than by regret.' He eventually bought out his partners' shares and secured the company's future. By 1928, a new security system devised by his brother Cecil to prevent cheating helped the pools become a household name across Britain.
Moores leveraged the massive mailing lists generated by the pools to launch the Littlewoods Mail Order Store in 1932. Inspired by the hardships of the Great Depression and his own family's struggles, he combined various existing retail schemes into a large-scale enterprise. The business expanded rapidly, reaching a turnover of £4 million a year by 1936. Beyond retail, Moores became a pivotal figure in sports, serving as chairman of Everton Football Club and even donating a trophy to the English national team for their first Amateur World Series victory in 1938.
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