FAQs

It's a season-long prediction competition you play against people you know. You pick three Premier League players before the season starts, and their combined league goals at the end of the season is your score. Get as close to 21 as you can — hit 22 or more and you're bust. All three of your players have to score at least once, or your hand is void.

Full rules are on the How to Play page.

No. There's a free tier, and it's a proper one — not a crippled demo. Pick your three players, watch your total climb week by week, argue with your mates on the leaderboard, and go bust in April like everyone else. It costs nothing and it always will.

The only difference between the two:

You choose which one you want when you confirm your lineup. Start free and switch to a pot entry later if you fancy it — you can upgrade any time before entries close at the first kickoff. You can't go the other way once you've paid in.

You do have to make that choice before the first kickoff, though. Picking three players isn't the last step — an entry that never confirms one way or the other doesn't make it into the season at all.

Nobody is going to pester you about it. If you never pay, nothing about your experience gets worse.

Friends, family and colleagues only. OverTheTop is invite-only while we prototype it. It isn't open to the public, we don't advertise it, we don't buy traffic, and there's no way to stumble across it and buy in. If you're here, it's because one of us sent you the link.

That's a deliberate choice, not an accident of being early. A competition sold to the general public is a fundamentally different proposition — legally and morally — from a private game between people who know each other. We've stayed firmly on the private side of that line: no advertising, no public sign-ups, no strangers.

If we ever wanted to open it up beyond our own circle, that's a decision we'd take properly — with actual advice, and with whatever registration, licensing or safeguards turned out to be required first. We wouldn't just quietly flip a switch.

Please don't share your invite link publicly, post it to a forum, or pass it to someone none of us know. It sounds like a small thing, but it's the one thing that would change what this is.

No, and we've built it deliberately so that it isn't. Three things keep it on the right side of that line:

• It's decided by skill, not chance. The result turns entirely on your judgement — reading a player's form, their fixtures, their role in the side, their injury record, how a manager rotates, whether a striker who got 18 last season can do it again. There's no draw, no spin, no random element anywhere. Every entrant faces the same task with the same information.
• It's private. Friends, family and colleagues only — see Who's allowed to play? above.
• The prize comes from the entrants. The whole entry fee goes into The Pot and the pot goes to an entrant, less the 10% we take at payout towards running it. We don't set odds, hold a book, or win when you lose — the pot is the same money whoever takes it.

We're not a licensed gambling operator and we don't hold ourselves out as one.

This is our honest reasoning, not legal advice — we're football fans with a laptop, not lawyers. If you'd rather not have money involved at all, take the free entry; it's exactly the same game. And if you think you may have a problem with gambling, free confidential help is available from GamCare — 0808 8020 133.

Only Premier League goals, scored in the current season. That means:

• Cup goals don't count — no FA Cup, no League Cup.
• European and international goals don't count.
• Own goals are never credited to the scorer, so they can't help or hurt you.
• Goals scored elsewhere before a mid-season transfer into the Premier League don't count. Only goals scored in this competition, this season.

We follow the official Premier League record. If a goal is reassigned after the fact — the Premier League's dubious goals panel does occasionally take a goal off one player and give it to another, sometimes weeks later — your total moves with it. The official record is always the final word, not what our page showed on the day.

No. Your three players are locked at the first kickoff of the season and stay locked until the last one in May. There's no transfer window, no wildcard and no swapping out a striker who's gone quiet since October.

That's the game, not a limitation of it. Committing to three players for nine months is a much harder call than picking three you can change your mind about later, and everyone in the competition makes that call at the same moment with the same information. Anyone allowed to adjust afterwards would be playing an easier version of it than the rest of the field.

Before that first kickoff you can change your three as often as you like, so there's no penalty for entering early and having second thoughts.

Their goals stay on your total, but they stop adding to it. A striker who scores eight and then ruptures an ACL in December is giving you exactly eight for the rest of the season. Same if they leave the Premier League in January.

There are no substitutions, no transfers and no replacement picks — that risk is part of the game, and it's the same risk for everyone. Picks are locked when the first match of the season kicks off.

Every pot entry puts £5 in. That money is pooled and paid out at the end of the season to the entrant closest to 21 without reaching 22, whose three players have all scored at least once.

The Pot is locked when entries close at the first kickoff. It doesn't grow after that, and it doesn't shrink when people go bust — a busted entrant's money stays in for whoever survives.

If two or more entries finish level, they split The Pot equally. There's no countback and no tiebreaker — if you and a mate both land on 21, you've both played it perfectly, and you take half each.

Free entrants sit on the same leaderboard throughout and can finish top of it — they just aren't playing for the money. See Do I have to pay?

Yes — 10% of The Pot, taken once at payout. Nothing comes off your entry: the full £5 goes into The Pot. When the season settles we deduct 10% from the pot total and the winner receives the rest. There is no fee to join, no charge to play for free, and no other margin anywhere.

Here's every penny of a £5 entry:

There is no deduction at all. Entry is a straight bank transfer, which costs nothing to send or receive, so the full amount you transfer is the amount that goes into The Pot.

Hosting and the data feeds come out of our own pockets, and we don't recover that from The Pot either. If that ever changes — if this grows to the point where we can't absorb the running costs — we'll say so in plain English on this page and on The Pot page before entries open for that season. Never mid-season, never quietly.

By bank transfer. When you choose a pot entry we show you our account details and a payment reference. Put that reference on the transfer — it's how we match your money to your entry.

Nothing is ever charged automatically; you send the transfer yourself. We check them by hand, so it can take a day or two to land. Until it does you're marked awaiting payment — ranked on the leaderboard as normal, but not yet in The Pot.

Card payment is on the way but isn't live yet, so bank transfer is the only way in for now. We'll never ask you for card details by email or message — if something claiming to be us does, it isn't us; forward it to help@21goals.co.uk.

After the final round of Premier League fixtures, once the official goal record for the season is settled, we confirm the winner — or winners, if the top score is tied — and arrange the payout directly with them by bank transfer. It's done by hand — expect it within a couple of weeks of the season ending, not the same evening.

Where a tie splits The Pot and it won't divide into exact pennies, the odd penny or two goes to the entry that confirmed first. It's an arbitrary rule for a trivial amount, but we'd rather write it down now than argue about 1p later.

If a late correction to the official record changes who won, the corrected result stands. We only pay out once the record is final, precisely so that doesn't happen.

We can't give tax advice. UK prizes from a genuine competition of skill aren't usually taxed as income, but your circumstances are yours — if in doubt, ask an accountant.

Once you've confirmed a pot entry the money goes in, and from that point it's final — no refunds, no changes to your three players. Everyone else's strategy depends on the field being fixed, so we can't make exceptions.

Before the first kickoff, if you've made a genuine mistake, email us and we'll do whatever we sensibly can.

If the Premier League season is abandoned or curtailed before it finishes and there's no fair way to settle the competition, we'll refund every pot entry in full. Nothing was deducted on the way in, so nothing is deducted on the way back out. We won't keep the money.

Everything on this site is built on publicly available Premier League data:

• Players, squads and positions come from the official Fantasy Premier League API.
• Fixtures, results and goalscorers come from the same place — the official Fantasy Premier League API is our only data feed.
• Player photographs and club crests are served from the Premier League's own public resource servers (resources.premierleague.com). We don't host, alter or re-license these images — they're displayed from source, and all rights in them remain with the Premier League and their respective owners.

If you own rights in any image or data shown here and would like it removed, email help@21goals.co.uk and we'll take it down promptly.

No. OverTheTop is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or in any way officially connected to the Premier League, the Football Association, any Premier League club, or any player.

All club names, crests, player names and player images are the property of their respective owners, and are used here only to identify real players and real matches so the game can be played.

Our totals update automatically from the data feeds above, which means they can lag behind a live match and very occasionally they can be wrong. The site is a scoreboard, not the referee.

The official Premier League record decides the competition, not what this site displayed at any given moment. If you spot a discrepancy, tell us and we'll fix it.

As little as we can get away with: your email address, the display name you choose, a securely hashed version of your password (we can't read it), and your picks and results. That's it.

We don't sell your data, we don't share it with advertisers, and there's no tracking or advertising anywhere on the site. Email us to get a copy of your data or to have your account deleted.

One entry per person. Multiple accounts is the one thing that would actually break the game — entering five times to cover five different totals turns a skill competition into a numbers exercise at everyone else's expense.

If we find duplicate or fake accounts we'll void the entries. Where a voided entry had paid in, we'll refund it rather than keep the money.

No — one entry per person, per league. A second entry in a league you're already in is a second go at the same pot: two chances to land on 21 where everyone else gets one, which is exactly the advantage a single well-judged pick is supposed to be worth.

Being in more than one league is fine — separate leagues are separate competitions with their own entrants and their own pots, and you hold one entry in each. It's two hands in the same pot that we don't allow, whether that's a second entry or a second account (see Can I enter more than once? above).

It's a prototype. We're still working out whether this is any good. Things will change, occasionally break, and get rebuilt. That's also why it's invite-only — see Who's allowed to play?

Availability. This runs on modest infrastructure and we can't promise it'll always be up. Downtime doesn't affect the outcome — results are settled from the official record regardless of whether the site was reachable.

Rule changes. We may correct or clarify the rules, and we may have to make a judgement call on something they don't cover. Anything material gets announced before entries close for a season, and we won't change the scoring rules mid-season.

Liability. The site is provided as-is. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything connected with OverTheTop is limited to the entry fee you paid — which for most people is nothing. Nothing here limits liability that can't legally be limited.

Fair play. We may suspend or void an entry that's abusive, fraudulent, or an attempt to manipulate the competition.

Governing law. These terms and the competition are governed by the law of England and Wales.