If you think you ‘know ball’, then The Football Game Co might just be the perfect way to prove that! It’s time to put your obscure footballing knowledge where your mouth is!
What is The Football Game Co?
It’s a bloody brilliant game, is what it is!
I played it recently with my friend, and we’ve always had this rivalry around ‘who has the most obscure football knowledge’ out of the two of us, and now we have the ultimate test.
So, let’s find out more about them in their own words…
For more games to play with your mates, click here.
How would you describe The Football Game Co in a nutshell?
The Football Game is a super simple football knowledge card game. If you’ve ever been sat with friends in a pub or family on a long trip and started naming football players, managers, clubs, etc to test who knows more or to pass the time you’ve probably played something similar.
The game takes this idea and formalises it into a card game, 1) so you don’t have to exert valuable football knowledge energy on thinking of the questions and 2) so you can keep score to see who has actually won.
How did you come up with the idea?
We first came up with the original version of the game at the back of the bus on the way back from a school trip some 15 years ago now.
Since then I’m not sure how many hours we’ve spent playing the game but let’s just say if it was scored by the “addictedness rating” you used to get on Football Manager (not sure if you still do?) then I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve maxed it out by now.
What does a day in the life look like at The Football Game Co?
Honestly super varied. There are three of us working on it – myself Sam, Jack and Jamie. We’ve all got full time jobs so this has been more of a side-project until now.
We don’t have really clear distinctions on who does what but Jack has worked in a number of creative roles so tends to lead on everything design, photography, content production and events.
Jamie works as a Video Editor and Videographer so is the man making sure any video you see on social media or our website looks great and then I focus more on the product development, user testing and “operations” side of things.
What has been your biggest achievement so far?
We ran a Kickstarter campaign February into March of this year and were looking to raise a little over £4,000 of initial orders for us to be able to get the project off the ground and order our first ever “bulk order” to sell.
It was a lot of work to prep for and launch as anyone who has done anything like that will tell you, but we’re super pleased to say we managed to get £6,200 of orders from 224 people that we will forever be grateful to.
Since then we’ve ordered a few hundred copies of the game, got them sent out to everyone who backed us during the Kickstarter campaign and have now launched an online shop on our website
What’s next for you?
With the online shop only being launched in the middle of July that’s still pretty new so we want to keep a close eye on that. Making sure we have a really good process in place for getting orders out to people as quickly as we can whilst still working on it on the side. We’re also planning on arranging an event later this year to celebrate the launch of the game and company.
We’ve had so many people support us from the 224 Kickstarter backers, to people who user tested the game in its early form, to different football podcasts, YouTube shows and journalists, and we’d love to get as many of these people as possible in one room to say thanks and have an evening playing the game together.
What is your end goal?
This might sound a bit cheesy but we love playing the game and we love seeing other people play it. We sometimes talk about “classic TFG (The Football Game) moments”.
When someone gets on a run and knocks out 15 answers in 10 seconds. When someone thinks the game is easy and then has a mind blank and can’t get an answer out for a whole minute. When someone pulls a player out from somewhere in their brain that everyone had forgotten existed.
Our end goal really is just to get as many people as possible aware of the game and hopefully playing it and enjoying it.
How can fans help you get there?
If you’ve not already, check out our social channels and give us a follow – Instagram is the main one we use but also YouTube and TikTok. We post quite a lot on there of us and others playing the game, as well as competitions and other bits. Getting involved and commenting on the competitions or sharing any rounds is always amazing to see and helps a lot.
Other than that, check out the website – [thefootballgame.co] and consider buying yourself or someone else a game. It makes a great birthday or Christmas present and we’ve had a lot of feedback saying it went down incredibly well on a stag do.
Why did you partner with us?
If this hasn’t come across very clearly already, we love football, especially anything 90’s and early 2000’s: shirts, Microstars, Championship Manager 01/02, FIFA 2005, going to games from non-league to Premier League, Fantasy Football, a kick about in the park as we watch our standard diminish with every passing year, all of it.
As a result we love this idea and would love to be part of the community it’s creating.
Any advice for football fans in the collector’s world?
Don’t let anyone tell you they’re just lumps of plastic!
Summary
Haven’t you heard enough?
Get away from here and play the game!