An Instant Win Raffle is a raffle with a fixed number of entries and a fixed number of prizes. The prizes are mixed among the entries at random and sealed before the Raffle opens, and you find out the moment your entry is taken whether it won one. This page explains how that works. It explains the mechanics only; if it ever differs from the Competition Terms and Conditions, the Terms apply.
How it works
- The prizes are fixed before the Raffle opens. Every Raffle Page states its Maximum Entries and every Instant Win prize with how many of each there are. Nothing is added or taken away once the Raffle is open.
- The prizes are mixed in at random and sealed. Think of every possible entry as a sealed ticket. Before anyone can enter, the prizes are mixed among those tickets at random and the whole arrangement is locked with a fingerprint we publish. From then on nobody, including us, can move a prize from one ticket to another or see which tickets hold one.
- Each entry takes one sealed ticket. The moment your entry is final (a Free Entry Ticket redeemed, site credit spent, a payment confirmed, or a postal entry logged) it takes one of the tickets still left. Nothing is looked at before the ticket is given, so every entry has exactly the odds of a blind pick from the tickets remaining. Whether you enter first or last, from the app or by post, the rule is the same. Some entries carry more than one bubble; each bubble is its own pick from the same mix.
- You see the result straight away. An entry you bought or were given takes its ticket when it is issued and stays sealed until you open it in the app, or until the Raffle closes, when every unopened ticket is opened for its owner. Opening a ticket shows you what it held; it does not change it. Free Entry Tickets and site-credit entries are opened on the tap.
- After close, anyone can check. The secret used to mix the prizes is published. With it, the whole arrangement can be rebuilt and compared with the fingerprint published before the Raffle opened, and every ticket checked against what it showed its owner. If the Raffle sold out, every prize was won. If it did not, prizes on tickets nobody took are not won by anyone.
Your odds
Your odds are those of a raffle and nothing else. At any moment the chance that the next entry wins is simply the share of the tickets still left that hold a prize, and it is the same for every player. Behind the scenes we use some engineering so that thousands of players can enter at the same moment without waiting. None of it changes those odds, and none of it can be used to steer a prize towards or away from anyone.
Demonstration
A dummy Raffle of 24 entries with 8 prizes. Mix and seal the prizes, let players enter one at a time or several at once, and watch the odds for the next entry. Then close the Raffle to open up the mix and check it. The mix is made with the same open-source package our servers use.
- Demonstration Raffle (dummy players)
- 24
- 3 × £10 site credit, 5 × Free entry
- not yet sealed
Check a real Raffle yourself
- In the app, open a closed Raffle's result and choose Check your instant-win cards. Your phone rebuilds the arrangement from the published secret, confirms it matches the fingerprint published at launch, and checks every ticket you were given.
- The full method is open source. The package that builds and checks the arrangement is published as @prizemart/safedraw under the MIT licence, and the same code runs on our servers and on your phone.