Subbuteo: the complete guide to the flick football game

Subbuteo is a tabletop football game played by flicking small figures across a cloth pitch with your finger. It was launched in England in 1947, it has a world federation and world championships, and at its peak it was in what felt like every house in Britain.

This page is the overview: what it is, how it works, what the pieces are called and what things are worth. Each section links to a full article if you want the detail.

The name comes from a bird

This is the first thing everyone gets wrong. Subbuteo is not a word — it is half the scientific name of a falcon.

Peter Adolph (1916–1994), an RAF veteran and a keen ornithologist, wanted to call his game Hobby, after the hobby falcon. He could not get the trademark. So he used the bird’s Latin name instead: *Falco subbuteo*.

He filed his outline patent in August 1946, announced the game in *The Boy’s Own Paper* that same month, and the first sets went on sale in March 1947.

Source: Subbuteo, Wikipedia — the patent dates, the Hobby trademark problem and the contents of the first Assembly Outfits.

What was in the box (and why it matters)

The first sets were called Assembly Outfits, and the contents tell you how humble this started:

• Wire goals with paper nets.
• A cellulose acetate ball.
• Cardboard figures in two kits, red and blue.
• Bases made from buttons, weighed down with lead washers.
• Chalk — because you drew the pitch yourself. An army blanket was the recommended surface.

That button detail is not a curiosity. On the other side of the world, in Brazil, an entire sport was being built out of shirt buttons at the same time. Two men, no contact, same answer.

How you play it

The short version: you flick a figure to hit the ball, and you keep possession as long as your flick makes the ball touch one of your own players and nothing goes wrong. There is a shooting line — you cannot score from your own half — the goalkeeper is worked by hand on a stick, and there is a genuine offside rule.

📖 Full detail: Subbuteo rules explained — the official laws and the reason each one exists.

The pieces

Four things, and each one changes the game more than beginners expect.

• The figures. Moulded players on a domed base. The base is the actual invention — the weight and the curve decide everything about how the piece travels.
• The pitch. Traditionally baize cloth; today more often a rubber-backed astro surface. Friction is a rule in disguise.
• The goals. Wire and net. Cheap, and the piece most likely to be bent out of shape in a loft.
• The ball. Small and light, and the thing everybody loses first.

📖 Full detail: Subbuteo teams — why the base, and not the flick, was the real invention. And the stadium and the corner if you want to build the surroundings.

Collecting: what old sets are actually worth

Subbuteo has a serious second-hand market, and it is full of myths. The short answer is that age alone is worth very little — condition, completeness and the specific reference number decide the price, and most lofts contain the common ones.

📖 Full detail: what Subbuteo teams are worth and how to spot heavyweight teams at a glance, which are the ones people most often misidentify.

Where it came from — and how far back it really goes

Subbuteo did not appear out of nowhere in 1947, and it was not even close to first. Harold Thornton patented a table football apparatus in 1921 (GB 205,991, published 1 November 1923), and across Europe and South America the same idea was being invented independently — Tipp-Kick in Germany in 1924, futebol de botão in Brazil in the 1930s, chapas in Spain.

And if you go further back, much further, the idea turns out to be about two thousand years old.

• 📖 One idea, five countries — how the world invented tabletop football five separate times.
• 📖 From bottle caps to Subbuteo — the short modern history.
• 📖 The Chinese game that got there first — tanqi, Han dynasty, built to imitate cuju.

Rugby, cricket and the other Subbuteos

Worth knowing if you are searching second-hand: the brand did not stop at football. There were Subbuteo rugby and Subbuteo cricket editions, plus angling, and they turn up regularly in attics. They use the same flicking idea with entirely different rules, and cricket sets in particular are often listed by sellers who have no idea what they have.

Is it still going?

Yes. Sets are still manufactured, there is an international federation running world championships, and there are active club scenes in England, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Greece — Italy especially, which is where a lot of the modern figure production happens.

What has changed is that it stopped being a mass-market toy and became a hobby with a community, which is roughly what happened to model railways.

Sources

The dates and figures on this page come from:

• Subbuteo — Peter Adolph, the 1946 patent, the March 1947 launch, the Falco subbuteo naming and the button bases.
• Table football — Harold Thornton’s GB 205,991, filed 1921 and published 1 November 1923.

Found an error? Tell me and I will fix it and note what changed.

Want to try the flick before you buy anything?

The one thing no article can give you is the feel of it: how hard to hit, how much the base carries, how easily you overrun the ball.

Play Toy Soccer Cup — free, in your browser

It is not Subbuteo and does not pretend to be — no licence, no official teams. It is the same gesture: aim, judge the force, accept the miss was yours. Against the computer, two people on one device, or someone in another country. If you then want the real thing on a real cloth, start with the rules.