We added up the prizes, ticket prices and ticket caps on 389 live competitions across 8 of the UK’s biggest competition sites on 12 October 2026. Sell every ticket and they promise 44p in prizes for every £1 paid in. Take the cash alternative and it’s 30p.
The headline
- Across £24.7m of tickets on sale, the prizes on offer are worth £10.9m. That’s 44.1%.
- Where a cash alternative is published, it averages 29.7% of the ticket money. The prize is valued at its retail price; the cash is what lands in your account.
- 161 of the 389 competitions (41%) pay back less than half. 39 pay back less than 40%.
- The biggest sites are the meanest. Elite Competitions puts £9.9m of tickets on sale across 10 competitions for 35p of prizes per £1. On its 6 car and house draws, the cash alternative is 27p.
| Site | Competitions | Tickets on sale | Prizes per £1 | Cash per £1 | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elite Competitions | 10 | £9.9m | 35p | 27p | 36.6% |
| Gaming Giveaways | 11 | £758,985 | 43p | 43p | 39.3% |
| Dream Car Giveaways | 11 | £527,478 | 47p | 47p | 54.0% |
| BOTBWinvia Entertainment | 3 | £7.6m | 49p | 29p | 49.4% |
| Rev CompsWinvia Entertainment | 305 | £2.3m | 51p | 35p | 50.6% |
| Lucky Day Competitions | 4 | £1.9m | 52p | – | 51.6% |
| Click CompetitionsWinvia Entertainment | 40 | £1.4m | 56p | 31p | 50.3% |
| Competiown | 5 | £310,225 | 60p | – | 56.1% |
| HoardsyChristmas launch | – | – | 60p–85p | 60p+ | – |
One company, three of the biggest names
BOTB, Click Competitions and Rev Comps are all owned by Winvia Entertainment, which also says it has agreed to buy The Giveaway Guys and Win Life Competitions (Winvia Entertainment). Between them, the three sites ran 348 of the 389 competitions we could score, with £11.3m of tickets on sale. The government’s 2025 study found one operator, Omaze, has more than 60% of players. One company has most of the players; another runs most of what the big sites sell.
BOTB: 49p per £1, 29p in cash. Rev Comps: 51p per £1, 35p in cash. Click Competitions: 56p per £1, 31p in cash.
The biggest competitions on sale
| Competition | Ticket | Max tickets | Tickets on sale | Prize value | Payback | Cash payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £2.1 Million Dream Home BundleElite Competitions | 19p | 29,999,999 | £5.7m | £2.0m | 34.6% | 26.3% |
| £1.3M Surrey HouseBOTB | £1.00 | 3,149,999 | £3.1m | £1.3m | 41.3% | 28.6% |
| Pumpkin Patch Harvest (£1.4M+ instant wins)BOTB | £1.99 | 1,199,999 | £2.4m | £1.4m | 58.6% | – |
| Night of a Million Prizes (£1M+ instant wins)BOTB | £1.19 | 1,699,999 | £2.0m | £1.0m | 49.4% | – |
| Million Pound Cash Vault Instant WinsLucky Day Competitions | 97p | 1,999,997 | £1.9m | £1.0m | 51.5% | – |
| 2026 Lamborghini Temerario + £10,000 CashElite Competitions | 5p | 19,999,999 | £1,000,000 | £316,000 | 31.6% | 26.0% |
| The Ultimate Car Wheel (£310,000 prize pot)Elite Competitions | £5.00 | 170,000 | £850,000 | £310,000 | 36.5% | – |
| Lamborghini Urus Performante & Patek Philippe 5990Elite Competitions | 8p | 9,999,999 | £800,000 | £305,000 | 38.1% | 28.1% |
| Prize Every Time Cash InstaWin (£167,000 prize pot)Elite Competitions | £1.00 | 500,000 | £500,000 | £167,000 | 33.4% | – |
| 50/50 CHANCE OF WINNING! 125,000 PRIZES INCLUDING 10 VEHICLES + £2,000 END PRIZE!Click Competitions | £1.99 | 249,995 | £497,490 | £341,316 | 68.6% | – |
| The Big £155k Cash Money Comp #1Gaming Giveaways | £1.49 | 300,000 | £447,000 | £160,500 | 35.9% | 35.9% |
| Win this Audi R8 V10 Plus & BMW X5 & £5,000 or £150,000 Tax FreeDream Car Giveaways | 31p | 999,999 | £310,000 | £150,000 | 48.4% | 48.4% |
| Porsche 911 992 Carrera GTS + £5,000 CashElite Competitions | 3p | 8,999,999 | £270,000 | £110,000 | 40.7% | 31.5% |
| BRAND NEW 2026 AUDI RS5 AVANT + £50,000 OR £120,000Rev Comps | £2.47 | 99,999 | £246,998 | £148,500 | 60.1% | 48.6% |
| 2024 BMW X5M + £5,000 CashElite Competitions | 3p | 7,999,999 | £240,000 | £88,000 | 36.7% | 31.3% |
Against the government’s numbers
A June 2025 study for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport found prize values worth “just under half (47% to 49%)” of entries sold, from an operator survey. Our figure, worked out from the sites’ own pages, is 44.1% by value and 29.7% in cash. Read the study’s other numbers in the UK competition market in numbers (London Economics for DCMS, 26 June 2025).
Sites we couldn’t score
We started with 20 of the biggest sites. On 5 of them the pages don’t publish what you need to work out payback: a ticket cap and a prize value. That’s the opacity in one line.
- Omaze omaze.co.uk No ticket cap. Entries are unlimited, so there is no sell-out figure to measure against.
- Raffle House rafflehouse.com No ticket cap published on the house draw.
- The Giveaway Guys thegiveawayguys.co.uk Ticket caps shown, but no prize value or cash alternative. Winvia Entertainment has agreed to buy it.
- Whipple Competitions whipplecompetitions.co.uk Prize values shown, but no ticket cap.
- 360 Comps 360comps.co.uk No total ticket cap shown on competition pages.
- 7days Performance 7daysperformance.co.uk Pages wouldn’t load for our checker (region block).
- UKCC ukcc.co.uk Pages wouldn’t load for our checker (region block).
- PM Competitions pmcompetitions.co.uk No competition details loaded.
- Premier Comps premiercomps.co.uk Only two listings, with no prize values or caps loaded.
- Mega Competitions megacompetitions.co.uk Listings showed no sales and test names, so we left them out.
- Star Draws stardraws.uk No live competitions listed.
- HMV Competitions hmvcompetitions.co.uk No live competitions listed.
Hoardsy, measured the same way
- Our Christmas instant-win games return 70p per £1 at a sell-out: 25p in the main draw and 45p in instant prizes, counted as they really pay.
- The £5,000 Christmas Drop (25p tickets) returns 60p, and the £20 Quick Draws (10p tickets, 235 max) 85p. Nothing we publish returns less than 60p.
- Winners of item prizes can take about 80% of the prize’s value in cash instead, which still leaves at least 60p per £1 of tickets at a sell-out. That is the “Cash per £1” figure in the table.
- Every Hoardsy competition page lists every prize and your chance per ticket, so you can check this yourself with the payback calculator.
How we worked it out
- Payback = prize value ÷ (ticket price × maximum tickets). It’s what the site promises if every ticket sells.
- Prize value is the value the site itself states. Where it only states a cash alternative, we use that. Instant-win games count every listed instant prize plus the end prize; free entries and ticket bundles count as nothing extra.
- Cash payback uses the published cash alternative instead of the prize’s retail value.
- Rev Comps and Click Competitions publish the full prize value, cash alternative, ticket price and ticket cap of every live competition in their own page data, so we took their whole live catalogue. On other sites we read each competition page.
- Gaming Giveaways states each prize as a cash value, so for that site the stated prize value is also counted as the cash alternative, instant prizes included. Leaving Gaming Giveaways out moves the cash figure from 29.7% to 29.1%.
- Where a site shows an “Enter from” price, we used that lowest price. It flatters the site.
- We left out free competitions and competitions whose prize is more tickets. We kept figures that look like mistakes (one Rolex draw pays back 5.7%) because that is what the site publishes. The median barely moves.
- Everything was captured on 12 October 2026. Each row in the CSV has the page address, the capture date and a fingerprint of our dated copy of that page.
Use the data
Download the CSV (389 competitions)
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: quote it, chart it and republish it, with credit to Hoardsy and a link to hoardsy.com/research/uk-competition-payback. All figures are calculated from the sites’ own published prizes, ticket prices and ticket caps on the capture date; sites change their listings daily. Journalists: see the press kit.
Hoardsy
See the competitions
Choose a draw or an instant game. Every prize and its chance is on the page before you enter.
18+, Great Britain only. Free postal entry on every competition.
