The Five Minute Winners Service is a new to market football betting tipster service which is operated by Nick Wrathall. The service is currently being marketed exclusively through Streetwise Publications.
Introduction to The Five Minute Winners Service
There is, in my opinion, a hell of a lot to be said for marketing and the tone that it takes. Furthermore, I think that there is arguably even more to be said for those whose job is to churn out copy and sell a service. It might seem a bit peculiar to be starting a review of a football tipster service talking about this, but it is very poignant when you are looking at today’s subject. Because more than anything else, there is one thing to keep in mind throughout. That is that Nick Wrathall is a self proclaimed “Leading U.K. Copywriter and information publisher”.
Which brings me to The Five Minute Winners Service, a sports betting tipster service in which we are supposedly shown Nick Wrathall’s ability successfully and profitably tip on football games. These are two skillsets that don’t necessarily have a huge amount of overlap, and yet, the sales material does a fantastic job of making it sound like you are getting into an all but nailed on, guaranteed winner here. I mean, who wouldn’t want to back a service that has “made [Nick Wrathall] £5,595.58 in net profit”? That’s a sure fire thing, right?
Well, as is so often the case with products from Streetwise Publications, the waters are a little muddier than the sales material makes it sound. Now, don’t misconstrue me here, Nick Wrathall really could be a multi-talented gent (with a bit of a superiority complex) who can bang out copy and also bang out winning bets. The Five Minute Winners Service could be genuine, and above board, and hugely profitable. But personally, I’m just not sure about all that. So, with a healthy dose of cynicism, let’s jump straight into it.
What Does The Five Minute Winners Service Offer?
The sales material for The Five Minute Winners Service is a bit of a trip really. And given the involvement of Streetwise Publications, and Nick Wrathall’s history, you’d expect this. But what it doesn’t really do a good job of is breaking down exactly what you are getting into. Now, I’m no big time copywriter, but in my experience dealing with genuine tipster services, offering your potential customers a clear idea of what they are getting into is a pretty important thing.
Now, the short answer to this is that you are signing up for a weekly tipster service that operates year round. There is a strong focus on English and European betting, as well as other global bets that are “thrown in” when Nick Wrathall believes they have a good chance of winning. So far, The Five Minute Winners Service is pretty much what you would probably expect to see.
What is a little less in line with what you would typically get from a tipster service is the way that it is managed. Forgoing sending selections out via email, The Five Minute Winners Service instead utilises a combination of a member’s area on a special website and an SMS text. These come with some very strong positives, and negatives in my mind.
Firstly, I like the use of a text message. I’ve often lamented missing opportunities simply because my email address becomes quite unmanageable. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it is much easier to miss one email out of the 50 plus I deal with per day, than a text message which is sent directly to my phone and can be received across… Well, most of the UK. With that said, the member’s area just seems a bit archaic in my mind, and it can be inconvenient having to log in to get full access .
What is decent with The Five Minute Winners Service though is that Nick Wrathall sends out bets before midday on match days. This should give you plenty of time to place the bets advised. It also potentially gives you the chance to increase your returns by taking advantage of an odds comparison site (something that Nick Wrathall doesn’t’ really talk about).
Before I continue, I want to mention the fact that this is a Streetwise Publications product pretty explicitly. This is a company that frequently goes out of their way to obfuscate information and keep it behind a paywall. Ultimately, this is fair enough, and clearly a business led decision. However, it does make it difficult to talk too much about certain elements of The Five Minute Winners Service without giving things away for free, which I don’t like to do. So please, just stick with me if I’m a bit vague.
When you sign up to The Five Minute Winners Service, you are given full instructions on a number of elements. This includes, but is not limited to, details on how much to stake, instructions on placing the bets in accordance with Nick Wrathall’s system, and various other bits and snippets. In theory, none of this is crucial information. But it is also noteworthy in my eyes that they are things that a lot of other tipster services are more than willing to discuss.
As well as the core tipster service, there are a few other things that could arguably be considered as features of The Five Minute Winners Service. First things first, Nick Wrathall provides full email support for his service. I have little reason to doubt that this will be available. Streetwise Publications are very protective of their brand, and a big part of that is offering support (and of course, it helps keep the refund rate down).
There is one final thing to talk about here, and this is the supposed success of The Five Minute Winners Service. Of course, there are the results, but I’ll be talking about that in detail later. Instead, I want to talk about the historic strike rates Streetwise Publications and Nick Wrathall claim for the service. These range from 47.01% to 59.66% over the last 4 years. The average comes in at a very respectable 55%.
The other thing is a “free online gift”. This is a training manual of sorts called Betting Shop Millionaire. This is a guide that provides a few different betting strategies for winning big on accumulators. Supposedly, this is based on the insight of a number of high profile individuals in the sports and betting world, many of who Nick Wrathall seems to simply be namedropping to add legitimacy to The Five Minute Winners Service.
How Does The Five Minute Winners Service Work?
One of the things that is so incredibly frustrating about The Five Minute Winners Service is that there is almost no information or insight into how exactly Nick Wrathall is finding his bets. This is always an issue for me, but it applies doubly so given a very transparent pivot from copywriting to a sports betting tipster. Something that is almost painfully apparent when you actually look at the sales material.
You see, in order to explain his legitimacy, Nick Wrathall takes us on a journey. This starts with describing a visit to a betting shop (which describes other punters in a very negative light) in which he picked up a massive winner. And then, he goes to another bookie and does the same. We’re even given copies of the betting slips as evidence. Of course, all of this happened 5 years ago…
We are then told Nick Wrathall’s contact with a famous bettor named Mr. G. A character who supposedly arrived in the UK from a French refugee camp, and ended up in a £5 million townhouse in Belgravia. This chap is no longer with us, but, Nick Wrathall assures us, that he passed on a lot of information. We are also told that The Five Minute Winners Service is based on things that he found did and didn’t work from a range of other impressive sounding bettors. This includes those aforementioned high profile individuals.
Honestly, as a read, it’s novel and dare I say mildly interesting. But it doesn’t actually tell us a single thing about how The Five Minute Winners Service works, and that concerns me greatly. Especially in light of the fact that Streetwise Publications don’t provide any real evidence of the results. There is some limited proofing for 2020 (going back to the end of March) as well as several examples of betting slips from previous years. All of this lacks context however, and I don’t consider it “solid” evidence at all.
What is the Initial Investment?
When it comes to pricing, Streetwise Publications have just one option available if you sign up to The Five Minute Winners Service. This is a one time cost of £397 (£330.83 plus VAT). For this, you get access to Nick Wrathall’s selections for a full 12 months. For context, this means a monthly cost of £33.08 which is pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, it is hard to ignore the fact that there is a very substantial initial outlay.
It is worth noting that there is a full 30 day money back guarantee in place for The Five Minute Winners Service. Generally speaking, Streetwise Publications are reasonable at handling this (although I have seen increasingly mixed feedback on this recently), but ultimately, you are still relying on the vendor in order to provide this.
What is the Rate of Return?
One of the interesting things about The Five Minute Winners Service is that there isn’t a whole amount said about how much you can expect to make following Nick Wrathall’s advice. The big number that is thrown around is making £5,595.58 off two bets. This is presented in a way that suggests a possibility of repeat, which I am highly sceptical of. Furthermore, let’s break that number down.
The first bet had a return of £1,610.29 off a £300 stake. This means an actual profit of about 4.3 points. Far from an exceptional number. Meanwhile, the other bet was a Yankee which saw a profit of £4,646. This was however based off an overall stake of £297. This is still an impressive 15.64 points of profit, but it is much less impressive in that context. Something that I believe Nick Wrathall and Streetwise Publications are aware of, because whilst the information is on the betting slips, it isn’t actually discussed.
Outside of this, Nick Wrathall only really talks about his results in terms of a percentile profit for previous years. This looks like the following (and comes without any real supporting evidence):
- 2016/17 season saw a profit of 137.77%,
- 2017/18 season saw a profit of 133.39%
- 2018/19 season saw a profit of 131.25%.
- 2019/20 season saw a profit of 133.39%.
As a final note, the results that are shown for the post pandemic period show a lot of profit across multiple winning bets. Unfortunately, there is no context for these though.
Conclusion for The Five Minute Winners Service
In order to wrap this up, I have to come full circle and talk about the copy that Nick Wrathall employs here. Honestly, I find it to be hugely off putting. In the game of punting, there are always winners and losers, sure. But to see people described as “rejects from a Jeremy Kyle casting session” and to be told that they were “more than a bit rough around the edges” … Well, as a working class lad from the arse end of Manchester, it’s a bit personal.
It also tells me a lot about who Nick Wrathall is. The fact is that my decision to start by talking about the copy was very deliberate. As was the choice to mention the authors past as a copywriter (including a previous professional relationship with Streetwise Publications). Because in my eyes, that is where the substance of The Five Minute Winners Service is. It is all there in the copy.
You see, what you are looking at here is a strong narrative. You can be better than those people. You can be like me, making my £5,595 off betting. You too can lean on advice that has incredibly tenuous links to the likes of Alan Brazil of TalkSport, Graham Sharpe (previously) of William Hill, and Angus “Statto” Loughron (a personality who was declared bankrupt back in 2008 due to debts owed to sporting index). All of whom are mentioned twice.
Of course, that all sounds impressive. But what about those previous results? Oh, wait… We aren’t actually told about anything except for the winners. Something that is made all the more frustrating by the fact that Streetwise Publications clearly have the full results as they say that they have them on file.
What about that selection process? I mean, with so many big names alluded to (and of course the almost anonymous Mr. G), as well as the fact that Nick Wrathall talks about how The Five Minute Winners Service is based on what has and hasn’t worked… Well, you’d quite reasonably expect him to have insight and knowledge that can be demonstrated. For my money, this categorically isn’t the case.
And all of that is very problematic for me. Because The Five Minute Winners Service is, and let’s not mince words here, bloody expensive. Whilst I am quite sure that Nick Wrathall and Streetwise Publications would make the argument that at £33 per month it isn’t a lot, there’s no getting past the fact that the outlay massively offsets that. Now there is an argument to be had about that 30 day money back guarantee mitigating this somewhat, and that is valid, but I wouldn’t generally advise putting too much faith in this.
So, when you bring it all together, what you have in The Five Minute Winners Service is somebody with a background in copywriting, pivoting to football betting, who wants you to pay out £400 for tips that are unproven. For my money, that premise alone simply isn’t one that screams out to me as being any kind of investment.
Now, I can already hear Streetwise Publications and Nick Wrathall crying out that I’m wrong. Telling me that they can prove everything, etc. And I don’t doubt that this will be the case. But in my experience with Streetwise, whilst their claims can be validated, it is usually under highly conditional circumstances (which you can somewhat see when you look at how much was staked for that £5,595 winning day).
Honestly, I just see The Five Minute Winners Service as being a pretty substantial risk. You’re paying out a lot of money for something that I don’t believe comes with any real guarantees. Meanwhile, you could go to a reputable tipster stable and see proven, consistent, and demonstrable profits for a much smaller outlay. And with so many (arguably better) options like this on the market, I can see no reason to invest my time and money here.
Thank you for this article. It has made me think twice about giving the service a go. I was also put off by doing a name search on Companies House and Nick Wrathall does not seem to be registered as a Director unless it is with Fluffy Enterprises Ltd, Friarglade Limited or Veneers Limited. There is no Company called FMW Ltd or The Five Minute Winners FBS Ltd either. All looks a bit dodgy to me.
I received a flyer today from Nick Wrathall. He now appears to have dispensed with Streetwise and is handling sales direct from his Devon address. The figures for the two featured bets have changed a bit. The first one was a £300 4-fold accumulator, netting a profit of £4.282.29, while the second was a £27 Yankee, netting a profit of £1.313.29.
He is now offering a month’s free trial, then payment of just £8 per week. On those terms it could be worth subscribing.