How our draws work

At the draw time the sealed seed is opened and the winning ticket is picked by the draw engine. There is nothing to watch. The winner is told by email and by notification in the app, and the result appears on the competition page with the seed and the verification steps.

Most everyday draws are auto draws. They run to the minute, whether or not anyone is looking.

The same draw, with the result revealed on screen. At the draw time the engine picks the winning ticket exactly as above, and then a short game shows it: a wheel that stops on each digit, balls that drop from lottery machines, a vault dial, a plinko board or a row of balloons.

The game is driven by the result, not the other way round. Watch it again and it plays out the same way, because there is only one result to show. See the games and how to read them on auto visual draws.

You can watch on the competition’s draw page, or in the evening show room on the draws page when several draws run together.

The same draw again, this time with a presenter revealing the result on camera. The winning ticket is still picked by the engine at the draw time. The presenter reads it out and shows it, and the recording stays with the competition afterwards.

Presented draws are streamed on YouTube to begin with. Watching them on the site itself is coming, and we will say so here when it is live.

At the draw, and not before. Two random seeds are sealed before entries close, and their fingerprints are published so nobody, including us, can swap them later. The winning ticket is worked out from those seeds and the final pool of entries at the draw time. Until entries close, nobody knows who will win, because the pool is not complete.

Instant wins are different, and we say so on their pages: those outcomes are fixed when you buy. Draws are not.

The full method, the fingerprints and the one-click checker are on draw fairness.