Spot the ball

How does spot the ball work?

Spot the ball is a common competition entry process used in the UK since the late 1960’s. The process is simple, a picture is shown to an audience, the football has been digitally removed from the picture. The picture is generally that of a football scene or action shoot. You see the players in the “Spot the ball” image, but the football in gone.

Each player that enters the “spot the ball” competition must use his judgement and skills to determine where he believes the centre of the ball to be located. Traditionally, in the newspapers, entries were submitted by mail. The coordinates of the footballs location was based on a grid system. The entrants would submit a single grid position where the player believes the centre of the ball to be. Today, modern “spot the ball” games use a digital interface. The centre of the ball generates a set of X and Y coordinates on the image, and the competition or prize entry is submitted via email or other electronic forms.

Depending on the size of the image used in the spot the ball competition or free prize draw, there can be a large number of possible coordinates. These Spot the ball competitions allow for a large amount of players to enter without running the risk of too many ties and identical spot selections.

Spot the ball process to determine the winner

The winner of spot the ball competitions and prizes draws are determined in a multitude of ways:

Spot the ball based on the actual centre of the ball:

For those that operate free competitions, free prize draws or spot the ball games that are just for fun, then entries and player are often trying to find the actual centre of the ball. In other words to determine the winner, it will be the competition entrant that has found the real position of the football on the image. or at least the one that is closest to it.

Spot the ball against professional referees

In many cases, if the spot the ball competition requires a payment to enter, no matter how small, even if it is just a £1 or £2, the competition spot the ball winner is matched against the results of a professional referee. The football referee follows the same process as all the other players. He determines where he believes the centre of the ball to be located using his professional experience. This in turn generates a set of coordinates X and Y. All the entries are matched against that of the professional football referee and the winner is the closest or exact match to the coordinates of the spot picked by the referee.

Uses of the spot the ball game

The purpose of the spot the ball process in competitions and prize draws is used to determine a winner, or filter out a significant amount of people and entries that would be eligible to win a prize. It depends on the objective of the competition and the amount and value of the prizes. in general there are 2 reasons why this for of game is used and it depends on whether the competition or prize draw is free to enter of if it is a pay to play on-line spot the ball competition.

Luck in determining the winner in Spot the ball games

You have often seen these competitions on TV or in magazines they often start with the famous words, “enter for a chance to win“.

The objective of the competition process is to eliminate a number of competition entrants and their entries.

In the case of spot the Ball competitions, some competition organizer can select the entries that are within a certain distance of the winning spot or just select the exact coordinates. Non the less, those competition entries that are considered as part of the winning group or selection needs to be split and a final winner determined.

The general accepted process of a tie break is to use a form of draw to split the winners of the competition and pick out the winner. Some of the factors influencing the final process is the amount of entries taken in by the Spot the Ball competition or Spot the ball game. It also depends on the intent of the promoter of the spot the ball competition, if it is a pay to play competition entry and the objective is to have a single winner then the process is designed for that exact purpose. If the objective of the promoter is for lead gathering, in other words, to collect personal information and commercial leads and to go ahead and sell them, then the maximum amount of potential winners will be selected to increase the lead generation potential of that competition.

Types of spot the ball games

The most common “Spot the ball” competition in the UK is generally using football images. The advantage of football images is that the players action and movement depicted in the image gives a lot of visual clues where the actual centre of the football can be located. Football image based Spot the ball competitions is the type that requires the most Skill and judgement as part of the entrants thus reducing the amount of luck in the process to determine the competition winner.

Finally, avoid using rugby, it is always debatable where the ball is and will be. Predicting the path of an oval ball is virtually impossible and often no amount of skill or judgement will help in determining the centre of the ball in these types of “Spot the ball” competition games.