We need YOUR input ​🙏​

[Fader]

Hello, all users of Punters Lounge,

We have Invision 5 on the horizon (currently in an alpha stage, with a Beta version in the coming weeks) and despite still likely to be a good 6 months away from a full version, we're eager to freshen the forum up in the coming months 🎨

Whilst unlikely to be wholesale changes, what I need from you now, is what you love about the forum, what you dislike or couldn't care much for, and ideally, what you think would improve it ☝️

Whether that be aesthetic things like colour, or requesting there be more/less coverage of certain Sports/Events. More Competitions in certain Sports/Events. Anything at all. Please don't be shy. This would help us immensely. Not only from a design sense going forward but also for us not to p*ss people off🤣

Punters Lounge is a betting community and that always will be number one. It's been that way as long as I've been here and that's a long time 👴 

thank you for any input 🙏

[Fader]

I'll likely use this also as a thread of potential changes going forward. So as an update going forward :

All Competition winners will be paid via Paypal ONLY!

So, as a preparation for this season, Please make sure that you have a PayPal account (free to get) if you're thinking of entering any of the comps. We're also likely to bring in a set date each month for prizes to be paid but I will update on those.

[Torque]

I'd like to see the tennis section get a revamp. It's currently as flat as a pancake and has been for some time. Something like more tournament and match previews to drive conversation. Considering that tennis is happening somewhere in the world nearly every day of the year, I'd say it's completely underserved on this forum. When I started on here - like you @Fader that's a few years ago - it was a vibrant place but that's long gone and it's now the equivalent of a wild west town with tumbleweed blowing along the main street.

[Fader]

@Torque I think much like Golf that we could have a tournament for the ranking events. We just need to think about a format for those. In terms of general day-to-day, what do you think you need to get the desired result? 

[Torque]

23 minutes ago, Fader said:

@Torque I think much like Golf that we could have a tournament for the ranking events. We just need to think about a format for those. In terms of general day-to-day, what do you think you need to get the desired result? 

IIRC, about ten years ago something was tried where there was a dedicated tennis tips page with previews and suggested bets, but for whatever reason it didn't last very long. I can also remember a tipping competition that was trialled, again with a separate page. Again that didn't last too long. Both of those ideas seemed good to me and perhaps could be resurrected in some form.

[Mindfulness]

This isn't going to be very helpful but I don't see any issues with the way the forum is atm.

I know you guys have to update periodically but I wouldn't add or remove anything myself. The free comps are good.

The Horse Racing threads are very active atm and have enjoyed trawling through there during the footy black hole.

Would be nice to have more discussion on betting systems, particularly compounding:

 

(What a flawless segway, Mindfulness you old grifter, you've done it again! They will surely thankyou for gumming up their suggestions thread with your blabbering crap, they really will!!!)

You are right @Fader, the betting community is most important aspect and key to the site. There's still a hardcore of experienced sports bettors on here who like what they do and know the game well. For me the discourse and rarefied ambience on punters lounge is Shangri La compared to the gutter-snipe wastelands of the general internet. 

[Trotter]

I'd like to see a big revamp of the football sections ........there's far too many subsections

I bet on football pretty much every day but I never post on PL ....... it's too fragmented. 

Also you might be having a yankee on games in 4 different countries or 4 different leagues or even 4 different continents ..... where would you post it ?

I'd like to see one football forum akin to the Racing Forum with a daily thread for today's bets and news and other threads as and when somebody wants to post something related to the great game

It works fine for racing !

 

[harry_rag]

@Fader For the avoidance of doubt I'm not @Trotter we are definitely 2 separate entities. He may have hacked my private messages though! 

(Suffice to say there may be vague similarities between the above post and sentiments I've already expressed!)

[Fader]

great points so far across the board. The changes are unlikely to be huge changes but just little things that may add value to punters. The Football section, I've heard from multiple people now, about the need for streamlining.

We're in the process of choosing a good format for these. Whether it be cutting down to just a few football sections or just having "Football" much like the Racing.

I encourage anybody with anything on their mind about the forum to come forth and have a moan.  

[Mindfulness]

36 minutes ago, Trotter said:

I'd like to see one football forum akin to the Racing Forum with a daily thread for today's bets and news and other threads as and when somebody wants to post something related to the great game

This is an interesting idea and we'd probably end up with a more active footy combo thread. Football Ante-post should be kept on a separate thread though.

Maybe keep domestic and international football separate also.

[harry_rag]

I think the thing with football is that it's probably the one sport on here where the most people bet on it regularly but don't post and that's largely because of the diffuse nature of the various sections, so I think that's firmly on the radar for review. With tennis I don't get a huge vibe that there's loads of keen tennis punters lurking that don't post. I could be wrong but I think it would be more of an issue of trying to attract "fresh meat" if you wanted to have more contributors. I suspect golf is somewhere in the middle with more members who do like a bet on it but don't post that often. Then there's the various "odd shaped balls" sports. I don't get much engagement in terms of Union or League though the NFL thread is a bit more active when the season rolls around.

It would be good to hear from anyone in terms of sports they like to bet on that they don't post about if there's something we could do that would increase the likelihood of them posting.  @Fader maybe even some value in a survey along the lines of which sports do you bet on/contribute on to try and tease out where there might be scope for more engagement if we made some tweaks.

[Fader]

yeah, 100% @harry_rag like that. Will get some Polls together.

[Trimble89]

27 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

I could be wrong but I think it would be more of an issue of trying to attract "fresh meat" if you wanted to have more contributors.

This maybe an issue for me.

I post now and then on the Darts forum, and you see the handful of same names popping up every now and then.

Best way to bring more people in, IMO, would be to utilise the accounts on X.

Have for example @Fader (Sorry, you're the main darts man round here 😁) sticking a video of himself discussing his main selection in the run up to each major, with a link to the forum "See the rest of my picks here"

 

[MCLARKE]

I think the main forum page isn't very helpful, you have to scroll down a fair way to get to the racing section. It may be better to have a sub menu with let's say, racing, football, competitions, other, gaming with sub menus beneath these based on popularity. 

I think the glory hunters forum / betting systems are quite popular but these are right down at the bottom at the moment, perhaps these could be combined and given more prominence to encourage people to test their systems out.

Also, perhaps a section for profitable systems as this is what a lot of people are looking for ! To be allowed in this section would be an honour, a lot of punters talk a good story but either don't deliver or don't keep records.

[harry_rag]

1 hour ago, Trotter said:

I'd like to see one football forum akin to the Racing Forum with a daily thread for today's bets and news and other threads as and when somebody wants to post something related to the great game

It works fine for racing !

 

40 minutes ago, Mindfulness said:

This is an interesting idea and we'd probably end up with a more active footy combo thread. Football Ante-post should be kept on a separate thread though.

Maybe keep domestic and international football separate also.

All broadly along the lines of what I've been thinking as a man who spends far too much time talking to himself in certain threads. As a starter for ten this is where I'm up to at present.

• "Daily Thread" - I definitely think the football section needs to be more like the racing section if it wants to attract a similar degree of contribution, engagement and viewing. My personal opinion is that a daily thread isn't quite optimum for footy (what if your yankee is split across 2 or 3 days). I'd retain the concept of a midweek thread and a weekend thread but a single one of each where we can post all our bets for that set of games in one places. No more darting off to Italy, Spain, Germany and Wales etc! As now, I'd start the threads in a timely manner so everyone would know where to post their selections and where to look to see fi any decent bets had been posted.
• I agree it would be a good idea to have a separate thread or threads for antepost betting.
• Non-League, I don't want to tread on @Darran's toes here but "come the evolution" it probably doesn't need a dedicated section; match bets in the relevant week/weekend thread and anteposts in that area.
• Chat and banter - keep separate, maybe as a thread rather than a section? (only 6 threads started this year)
• ELO Ratings Discussion - again, maybe a single thread would suffice
• Major tournaments (Euros, World Cup etc.) these merit their own sections. I think this year's approach was reasonably balanced (we don't need separate threads for every group, every antepost market, as part of the general move to "less is more".)

[harry_rag]

22 minutes ago, Trimble89 said:

Have for example @Fader (Sorry, you're the main darts man round here 😁) sticking a video of himself discussing his main selection in the run up to each major, with a link to the forum "See the rest of my picks here"

We need to be wary of who we post videos of if the intention is to attract people to the site! 

Fader would be fine but if it was me all the traffic would be going in the opposite direction!

[MCLARKE]

I agree

I've done all my public speaking now I think (daughters' weddings / parents' funerals).

[u1905068]

I agree with most of you guys, the Home Page it's too long which sometimes you are not bothered to scroll down until the bottom. Some of the sections at "UK & Ireland Football Forums , European Football Forums , International Football Forums , and the rest of the Footy sections could be merged which would make it easier to navigate. 

As @harry_rag suggested, a survey regards what people are interested the most would be interesting! 

[Mindfulness]

28 minutes ago, MCLARKE said:

I agree

I've done all my public speaking now

Au contraire @MCLARKE, I've booked you to front the August UK mini-budget. DON'T piss off the bond holders this time!

[Mindfulness]

Is this a bad time to suggest PL top brass has to post the ELO ratings live on tik-tok each week, wearing just their pants???

Seriously guys we will get more traffic this way.

[Fader]

42 minutes ago, Trimble89 said:

This maybe an issue for me.

I post now and then on the Darts forum, and you see the handful of same names popping up every now and then.

Best way to bring more people in, IMO, would be to utilise the accounts on X.

Have for example @Fader (Sorry, you're the main darts man round here 😁) sticking a video of himself discussing his main selection in the run up to each major, with a link to the forum "See the rest of my picks here"

 

as of August, we'll be going forward with full social media coverage

[Fader]

1 hour ago, MCLARKE said:

I think the main forum page isn't very helpful, you have to scroll down a fair way to get to the racing section. It may be better to have a sub menu with let's say, racing, football, competitions, other, gaming with sub menus beneath these based on popularity. 

I think the glory hunters forum / betting systems are quite popular but these are right down at the bottom at the moment, perhaps these could be combined and given more prominence to encourage people to test their systems out.

Also, perhaps a section for profitable systems as this is what a lot of people are looking for ! To be allowed in this section would be an honour, a lot of punters talk a good story but either don't deliver or don't keep records.

like this. Especially the last paragraph

[Fader]

1 hour ago, harry_rag said:

We need to be wary of who we post videos of if the intention is to attract people to the site! 

Fader would be fine but if it was me all the traffic would be going in the opposite direction!

are you saying young, blonde and size 10? haha

[Fader]

33 minutes ago, Mindfulness said:

Is this a bad time to suggest PL top brass has to post the ELO ratings live on tik-tok each week, wearing just their pants???

Seriously guys we will get more traffic this way.

just to confirm this is an offer from @Mindfulness

[MCLARKE]

6 minutes ago, Fader said:

are you saying young, blonde and size 10? haha

Very sexist but yes, these were the criteria when I used to employ people in the good old days !

[Torque]

2 hours ago, harry_rag said:

It would be good to hear from anyone in terms of sports they like to bet on that they don't post about if there's something we could do that would increase the likelihood of them posting.  @Fader maybe even some value in a survey along the lines of which sports do you bet on/contribute on to try and tease out where there might be scope for more engagement if we made some tweaks.

I can answer that easily enough - trolls. Certainly that's an issue on the tennis thread, which for some reason attracts them in droves and has done for years. As for the tennis forum being quiet, it certainly is as far as posts go but I'd imagine there's still plenty of users that visit and those users would probably be far more likely to post if it was a livelier place like the horse racing forum for example. Years and years - and years - ago, you could see a list at the bottom of each forum page that showed the number of visitors at any one time, but that function was lost when the forum was upgraded. 

[Fader]

14 minutes ago, Torque said:

I can answer that easily enough - trolls. Certainly that's an issue on the tennis thread, which for some reason attracts them in droves and has done for years. As for the tennis forum being quiet, it certainly is as far as posts go but I'd imagine there's still plenty of users that visit and those users would probably be far more likely to post if it was a livelier place like the horse racing forum for example. Years and years - and years - ago, you could see a list at the bottom of each forum page that showed the number of visitors at any one time, but that function was lost when the forum was upgraded. 

yeah, just for context, Tennis is highest viewed after Football and Horse Racing

[Fader]

another thing I'd like to bring back after speaking with @StevieDay1983 is the end-of-year PL awards. That used to be a good laugh.

[harry_rag]

27 minutes ago, MCLARKE said:

Very sexist but yes, these were the criteria when I used to employ people in the good old days !

I didn't know you worked in TV, what was Leonard Sachs like? (a joke for our younger members there).

[Torque]

5 minutes ago, Fader said:

another thing I'd like to bring back after speaking with @StevieDay1983 is the end-of-year PL awards. That used to be a good laugh.

Yeah they were good fun. I think I'd bin the 'user I'd be least likely to take advice from or copy a bet from' or whatever it was called though.