Competition Value Calculator: Is This Prize Draw Worth Entering?

What the calculator measures

A capped competition is a simple machine. The operator sells up to a fixed number of tickets at a fixed price, draws one, and hands over the prize. Multiply the price by the cap and you have the most the draw can ever take. Divide the prize by that and you have the share of the money that returns to entrants, which we call the prize share. Everything else, the margin, the payment fees, the VAT on each ticket and the cost of running the thing, comes out of the remainder.

The same number can be read another way. A prize share of 50% means that for every £1 the draw takes, 50p is paid back out as the prize. That is the expected return on a ticket if every ticket sells, and it is the closest thing a competition has to the published payout rate of a lottery or a slot machine. It is not a prediction of what you will get back, because almost everyone gets nothing and one person gets the lot. It is a measure of how the draw is priced.

What counts as good value

Nobody regulates this, so we needed a yardstick and chose a published one. The Birthday Draw, the weekly national draw from ITV and Global, states in its terms that its prize fund is 40% of net entry sales. A capped competition whose prize is 40% or more of its maximum takings is therefore paying out at least as large a share as a draw backed by two of the biggest media companies in the country. We call 40% to 60% good value, anything above 60% unusually generous, 25% to 40% typical of the market, and below 25% poor. Those are our bands and you are welcome to disagree with them. The arithmetic underneath is the same whatever labels you prefer.

The third row is the one worth dwelling on. Big car draws with six-figure ticket caps are the most heavily advertised competitions in the country, and on this measure they are often the least generous. A 99p ticket feels like nothing, which is exactly why the cap can be so high. The fourth row is a small cash draw of the kind that rarely gets advertised at all, and it returns two thirds of the money. Small and unglamorous frequently beats big and shiny.

Value the prize honestly

The calculator is only as good as the prize value you type in, and this is where operators and entrants both flatter the sums. A prize advertised at its manufacturer's price is worth that much only if you would have paid it. If the competition offers a cash alternative, use that, because it is the amount you could actually walk away with, and it is usually well below the headline figure. We explain why in our guide to cash alternatives and selling a prize. If there is no cash alternative, ask what the item would fetch second hand the week after you won it, and use that.

Cash prizes need no adjustment, which is one reason cash draws tend to look better on this measure than product draws, and one reason we like running them. A £1,000 prize is worth £1,000 to everybody.

Value and odds are different questions

Prize share tells you how much of the pot comes back. It says nothing about your chance of being the one it comes back to. That is the ticket cap's job, and the two can pull in opposite directions. A £20,000 prize in a 20,000 ticket draw at £2 has a 50% prize share and odds of 1 in 20,000 a ticket. A £400 prize in a 1,000 ticket draw at £1 has a 40% prize share and odds of 1 in 1,000. The first is slightly better value and the second is twenty times easier to win.

Which matters more is up to you, and it tends to come down to what you would do with the prize. People who want a realistic shot at winning something go for the small caps. People who want a chance at a prize that would change their month go for the big ones and accept the longer odds. Our odds calculator goes deeper on the second half of this, including how many tickets a given chance costs and how the odds compare with the National Lottery.

Tickets sold so far changes everything

Both figures above assume every ticket sells, and in a properly run draw they often do not. A guaranteed draw closes at its published time whatever the sales, which means the prize is paid out of less money than the maximum and your chance is your tickets against the tickets actually sold. Type the number sold into the optional box and the calculator shows both figures as they stand. Late in a quiet draw, the prize share can pass 100%, which is the operator losing money on that draw and the entrants getting a bargain.

An operator who extends the closing date until the draw sells out removes that advantage, and the extension clause is worth looking for in the terms before you enter. On Coast every draw page shows how many tickets have gone and closes on the date printed, which is the only way the numbers on the page can be trusted.

What the calculator cannot tell you

It cannot tell you whether the operator is honest. A scam can publish any cap and any prize it likes, and a prize share of 90% in a draw that never happens is worth precisely nothing. Run the site through the twelve points in how to tell if an online competition is legitimate first: a named company, a free postal entry route, a fixed closing date with no extension clause, and results you can read afterwards. Value is the second test, not the first.

It also cannot tell you whether you want the prize, and that is the test that matters most. A generous draw for something you would sell on the day it arrived is a worse use of money than a typical draw for something you would use every week. Decide what you are happy to spend each month, treat it as entertainment, and put it where the numbers and your own wants line up.

Summary

Divide the prize by the most the draw can take and you have the prize share, the one number that tells you how a competition is priced. Forty percent or more is good value by the yardstick of a national draw, under 25% is poor, and small cash draws tend to score best. Value the prize honestly, check the odds separately, enter the tickets sold if you know them, and check the operator before any of it. You can see every one of those numbers on our live competitions page, where the price, the cap, the prize and the tickets sold are all shown before you decide.