A fantasy football website that launched last summer in a blaze of publicity has gone into voluntary liquidation with debts of £3m.
Premierwin.com, which offered a £1m first prize and £100,000 to the runner-up, said it hoped to be able to pay out to the winners at the end of the season.
A spokesman for the liquidator ,Parker Wood, said the £1.1m main prize money had been placed in an escrow protecting the prize money.
"It is hoped the site will continue to run for team changes to enable participants to continue to play," a statement posted on the premierwin.com website said.
Premierwin.com will not be able to pay the outstanding £1,000 weekly and £5,000 monthly prizes it promised, according to the website statement.
The statistics on the site, which are supplied by Opta, have not been updated since the end of March.
The last entry in the premierwin.com monthly winner's gallery is from January.
The Parker Wood spokesman said a number of factors had contributed to premierwin.com's failure.
"They weren't able to generate enough sponsorship money and they didn't attract enough players - in part due to early administrative difficulties," he added.
"The company also had very high running costs and a huge advertising spend."
Premierwin.com signed a deal with national commercial radio station TalkSport to promote the website.
The agreement involved a weekly announcement of premierwin.com winners on Alan Brazil's TalkSport breakfast show.
But the Parker Wood spokesman said this arrangement had already come to an end, adding that TalkSport had been "pre-paid" as part of the agreement.
He said the current intention was for a premierwin.com winner to be announced through TalkSport within 90 days of the end of the football season.
It was also hoped the publicity generated by the announcement of the two winners can be used to create interest in the sale of premierwin.com's assets.
These include the domain name, data-base - which is estimated to include the 17-18,000 competitors who signed up for premierwin.com - and the game format.
The Parker Wood spokesman said a number of interested parties had been in contact with the liquidator about buying premierwin.com's assets.
"The company has gone but we think it's a good concept and believe people will want to learn from this and create a successful operation, " he added.
He said a shareholder owning 52% of the company behind premierwin.com, Football Manager Limited, had invested £2.38m in the internet venture, including the £1.1m for the two main prizes.
This backer did not want their identity revealed, he added.
The other major creditors include software company Systems for Windows, which inputted all the football results data, and marketing outfit Advanced Response Marketing Direct, the spokesman said.
Opta, which supplied the results data, is also owed a smaller amount of money, he added.
The spokesman said because premierwin.com had outsourced its operations, there would be relatively few job losses.
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