Behind The Scenes Of A Live Draw
While our live draws on Facebook and YouTube can seem like a well-oiled machine at times, that’s only because we’ve been doing them for many years.
However, we have been going live on Facebook and YouTube for our live draws since the very beginning. They've improved over the years, with our camera skills and animations becoming more professional to the standard you see today. If you've been a player since the beginning, you will remember the days when Alex (our Founder and Managing Director), did all the live draws himself with a large ball machine and would announce the winners. Thankfully, with a growing team of 16 now, Alex's days of having to do these are over.
Since we changed our business model in early 2023 and introduced InstaWins, which many of you will now know and love, our live draws can go under the radar to our newer players. We still receive questions asking what a live draw is and how it works. This blog article will aim to answer all of those questions for you.
As always, if you have more queries, don’t hesitate to send us a quick email or Facebook message!
When you purchase a ticket on any of our competitions, whether that’s a Jackpot InstaWin or a House, you are being entered into an “end prize”. A lot of the time, this end prize is £500, £1000, or sometimes even a car or house itself. This end prize is made clear by the type of competition it is. Every ticket you purchase is given a randomly generated number from our encrypted database, and this ticket is unique to you.
If, for example, a competition has 299,999 tickets, and you buy just one, you may receive number 134,005. That ticket is only yours and will remain in your account till the live draw date. This countdown is advertised on every competition page so we remain transparent on each live draw date!
These go live to our Facebook and YouTube pages (make sure you’re following both pages if you’re not already!), and we currently go live every Tuesday and Friday at 5.30pm. Depending on how many competitions are ending on those particular days, we can be live for around 40 minutes: but we make draws a fun experience to be a part of! We play games, chat with viewers and even give away free site credit at the end…which gives you a reason to stick around!
So, once we’re live on Facebook/YouTube, you will be greeted by one of our hosts. Although everyone in the Elite office could do it, we generally rely on a few of our more camera-confident team members. Chances are you’ll see Luke, Tom or Georgie. Make sure you say hi to them when you join!
We have an industry-standard lottery-ball machine, which we load balls into live on camera so you can see what we’re doing. Transparency is everything with us! If there are ever any issues (because technical errors can happen), we will always empty the ball machine and start again for full transparency. The balls are loaded into chambers, locked and loaded ready for the big draw. The chambers will spin and a ball is released, being displayed on a digital screen which you can see.
And from there, the draw happens very much like the lottery does! We set the ball machine off and a random string of numbers are drawn out. Once again, you can see all of this happening in front of your eyes. We check those numbers with our system to see if that ticket number was purchased. So, if your ticket number 134,005 is pulled out, we will be checking that and you will see your name appear on the screen!
And, as some people ask, no you don’t have to be watching the live draw to receive your prize. Our customer service team will be in touch within 24 hours regardless of you watching live or not!
We host all of our live draws from the Elite HQ in Blackpool, using our studio space. This, much like every other aspect of our business, is an ongoing, ever-growing aspect and we can't wait for it to continue improving and make those live events so much more enjoyable for the viewer.
Remember to follow us on Facebook and YouTube if you want to see these live draws happen!