Money Watch – Personal Finance Blog

Investment product provider Skandia has launched an online “Fantasy Fund Football” game with a total prize fund of £25,000.

The game uses football as a way of helping people understand the principles of building and monitoring an investment portfolio. The educational element of the game has led to its endorsement by the Financial Skills Partnership.

The idea of the game is for users, ‘team managers’, to build, manage and monitor a team of funds, selecting the right combination of attackers, midfielders, defenders and substitutes on the bench. Kicking-off with £100,000 of virtual money invested across the team, the aim is to have the highest total fund value at the end of the main game on 06 April 2012.

Team managers can design their own kit and badge for their team, and then select their players from a range of over 400 funds. As in football, when building an investment portfolio, people need to consider how aggressive or defensive they want to be. The game allows team managers to select the formation that matches their view of the market, whether that is an attacking or more defensive formation.

The funds in the game have been categorised as defenders, midfielders and attackers – the goalkeeper for every team is cash. Each team manager then chooses their starting line up of 10 investment funds and selects an additional six investment funds to sit on their substitute’s bench. Initially the game will allocate £10,000 to the goalkeeper and £9,000 to each of the 10 outfield players.

Team managers will have the opportunity to substitute players, and there will also be a transfer window, providing the opportunity to switch all holdings.

Once playing the game, team managers are able to create their own mini leagues and challenge their family, friends or colleagues to compete with them. They can use this to create their own competition within their mini league and there is also a prize for the highest ranked mini league at the end of the game.

The overall prize fund is £25,000, including an individual prize of £15,000 for the best performing team manager at the end of the game, £3,000 for second place, £1,500 for third place, £1,500 for the winning mini league, a £500 monthly prize for best performer, a £1,000 refer a friend prize draw and 18 other cash prizes.

The game will create a community whereby team managers can exchange tips, and can follow ‘Big Frank’, the pundit for the game, on Twitter. In addition to the web version of the game, it will shortly be available on Facebook and mobile applications, maximising the attraction for those who use social media.

The game is now open for people to register and lasts for four months. To register go to www.fantasyfundfootball.co.uk

Jeremy Mugridge, Skandia’s head of digital marketing, comments:

“This is an exciting and fun game for people to play, with an underlying educational element, helping people understand more about building and monitoring an investment portfolio. It will give people an idea of the range of issues they need to consider when deciding how to invest their money and will illustrate some of the activities that financial advisers carry out when managing their customer’s portfolios.

“At a time when there is so much stock market volatility, we hope the game will be very interactive and people will want to invite their friends and family to compete against them for the chance to win the top prize of £15,000.”

Jenny Barber, head of education and careers at the Financial Skills Partnership, comments:

“Financial services is often misunderstood and this game shows how a strong, creative idea can bring the world of investing to life. It is a great way for people to learn some of the principles of how to manage investments and demonstrates that careers in financial services are fun, creative and so much more than number crunching.”

Fantasy investing games are not that uncommon, but Skandia have added an interesting twist on that concept by adding football into the mix. The fact that the game is intended to educate users on building an investment portfolio is another good touch, with a decent prize for the winner which would certainly help build a real portfolio of funds.