Terms and conditions

How to contact us

The site is operated from the United Kingdom. Questions, problems, complaints and anything you want to report all go to admin@thehomegames.co.uk, and a real person reads it. Who is legally responsible for the site, and for the information it holds, is set out in the privacy and data protection notice.

Who can use the site

The site is built for players in the UK. It should work elsewhere, but we make no promise that it is suitable or lawful where you are, and if you play from abroad that is on you.

Accounts are for players aged 16 and over. Younger players join as guests, added by a group organiser, who should have the agreement of the player or, for a child, a parent or guardian. The site is for personal use. It is not for running a business, a syndicate or anything commercial.

Accounts, guests and PINs

Give accurate details when you sign up and keep your password or PIN to yourself. Anything done under your sign in is treated as done by you, so if you think someone else has got into your account, change your password and tell us.

One entry per person per group. Playing under two names in the same group is cheating and the organiser can remove you for it.

Groups and organisers

Every group has an organiser who runs it. They send invites, add guest players, reset forgotten PINs, remove members, hand the group over to someone else or delete it outright. That is a lot of control, and it sits with them rather than with us.

Deleting a group, or removing a player from one, permanently deletes the picks made there and the record of them. Final tables of seasons already finished stay with the group as its history, holding display names and points and nothing more.

Invite links work for anyone holding them, so send them only to people you actually want in your group. Groups are private unless the owner makes them public, and a public group shows its name and its points on the leaderboard. Pick a group name you are happy for strangers to read, not somebody's full name.

Pots

Some groups like to put a few pounds in a pot. The site gives organisers a display that tallies what a pot would pay out, and a display is all it is. The site never collects, holds, transfers or pays out money. It has no wallet and takes no cut.

Any pot is a private arrangement between the members of a group, made and settled entirely away from the site. Members are responsible for their own arrangements, including keeping them lawful where they live. Nothing here is a betting or gambling service, and the pot display is not a promise that anyone will pay anyone anything.

Playing the game

Each round locks at its deadline and picks cannot be changed after that. Scoring is 3 points for the exact score and 1 for the right result. Only confirmed full time results go in.

Fixtures move and mistakes happen. Fixtures, results and scoring may be corrected after the event, and the corrected table is the one that counts. Leaderboards, weekly winners and badges are for bragging rights. The site itself offers no prizes.

What you can and cannot do

Names and pictures on this site are seen by other people, so keep them decent. No offensive, abusive, hateful, discriminatory or misleading names, for you or your group. No impersonating anyone. No pictures you do not have the right to use.

More seriously, and this one is not negotiable: nothing illegal. Do not use the site to harass, threaten or abuse another player, to share illegal material of any kind, or to put up anything that would be an offence to send.

Leave the site itself alone as well. No attempts to break into it, disrupt it, overload it, scrape it or interfere with anyone else's picks, and no introducing anything malicious into it.

Reporting something

If you see a name, a group, a picture or a message on the site that is illegal, abusive or otherwise out of order, tell us at admin@thehomegames.co.uk. Say what you saw and where, and we will look at it and take it down if it should not be there. Anything illegal, and anything that puts a child at risk, gets dealt with as a priority and reported on where the law requires it.

If you think we have got a decision wrong, whether that is removing something of yours or leaving something up you reported, reply and say so and it will be looked at again. The same address takes any other complaint about the site.

What you put on the site

Your display name, your group name and your profile picture stay yours. By putting them on the site you let us store them and show them to the other people in your groups, and on the public leaderboard in the case of a group name, for as long as you use the site. That permission costs nothing and it exists purely so the game can work.

We can remove or change a name, a picture, a guest entry, a group or an account that breaks these terms, and in serious cases block access altogether.

Our content, and leaving it alone

The site, its design, its code, its text and everything else on it belongs to us or to whoever licensed it to us. Nothing in these terms hands you any rights in it beyond being able to use the site as it is meant to be used.

Without our written permission you must not copy, reproduce or adapt the site or its content, strip out any notices attached to it, or use bots, crawlers, scrapers or any other automated process to pull data or content off it. That includes collecting content to build a database or feeding it into an artificial intelligence system, whether to train a model, generate material or use as a prompt.

Who we are not

The site is not affiliated with, licensed by or endorsed by any league, club, competition or governing body. Team and competition names are used to identify real fixtures. Badges and logos stay the property of their owners.

Availability and changes to the site

The site is free and provided as available. It may be unavailable for maintenance and updates, because something has broken, or because of something outside our control.

We may change or update the site to improve it, to keep it secure, to meet a legal requirement or to reflect a change in what it does. Features may be added, changed, suspended or withdrawn, and the whole thing may one day close. If a change materially removes something you reasonably rely on, we will make a proper effort to tell you first.

We aim to be reliable but we do not promise uninterrupted or error free service, and we do not guarantee the site works on every device or browser. On rare occasions picks or points may have to be restored from a backup.

Accessibility

The site is built to work with screen readers and keyboard navigation, though we cannot promise it behaves perfectly with every device, browser or assistive tool. If you hit a barrier using the site, or you want these terms or the privacy notice in another format, email admin@thehomegames.co.uk and we will sort something out.

Ending things

You can stop playing whenever you like. Members can leave a group, and you can ask for your account to be deleted, as set out in the privacy and data protection notice.

We can suspend or end access to the site, including an account, a guest entry or a whole group, where these terms have been broken or where it is necessary for security or legal reasons. Where we can, we will tell you why and how to put it right or appeal.

Our responsibility to you

If we break these terms or fail to use reasonable care and skill, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer as a foreseeable result. Foreseeable means it was obvious it would happen, or that both of us knew it might, at the time you started using the site.

We are not responsible for loss or damage that was not foreseeable, that we did not cause, or that comes from you breaking these terms, from your own device or internet connection, or from a third party system outside our control. The site is for personal use, so we accept no responsibility for business losses. We are not responsible for what group members agree between themselves, pots included.

Nothing here excludes or limits our liability where the law does not allow it, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Nothing here takes away any right you have under consumer law.

Your privacy

What we collect, why, where it lives, how long it stays and what rights you have over it are all in the privacy and data protection notice. Worth a read: it is short and it is written to be understood.

Changes to these terms

These terms may change as the site grows, to reflect a change in the law, a change in what the site does, or something we need to do for security or to keep it running. The current version always sits on this page with its date at the top, and where a change matters to you we will make a proper effort to tell you rather than leaving you to notice. Carrying on using the site after that means you accept the new version.

General legal terms

If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later. If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands. We are not liable for failing to meet these terms because of something beyond our reasonable control. Nobody other than you and us can enforce any of these terms.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you can also bring proceedings in your local courts, and you keep the benefit of any protections the law there gives you.