Competitions

Create, publish and run competitions end to end: build a competition in the four-step wizard, generate copy with AI, set ticket prices with early bird and quantity (bulk) discounts, gate entry with access codes or eligibility rules, manage the image gallery, add instant win prizes, hand out free or postal entries, export the entry list, and tidy up with duplicate, archive and tags.

Where to find it: Admin → Competitions (/admin/competitions).

Find a competition in the list

The list opens filtered to Active competitions. Four cards at the top show your global counts: Total Competitions, Active, Draft and Ended.

• Search matches the competition title, display title or URL slug.
• Filter by status — All, Active, Draft, Ended, Pushed or Archived. The All, Active, Draft, Ended and Pushed options show their counts (the currently selected filter hides its own; Archived never shows one).
• Filter by tag — a Tag row appears under the status buttons once you have tags (see below). Click a tag to show only competitions carrying it; click the lit tag again to clear it. Your five most recently used tags sit there as buttons and the rest are in the All tags dropdown; picking one from the dropdown moves it into the buttons. The list is remembered in the browser you're using, so it won't follow you to another computer.
• Sort by clicking the Competition (title), Tickets (sold), Price or End Date column headers. The Status column can't be sorted. Sorting keeps whatever tag, status and search you have set.

Each row also shows the competition's public URL path under its title:

• Click the slug link to open the public page in a new tab.
• Click the clipboard icon to copy the full public URL — handy for pasting into marketing messages. For drafts, cancelled competitions and competitions that aren't visible yet, the copied URL is a preview link (it ends in ?preview=1) so you can view the page even though customers can't.
• An amber Hidden badge appears when the competition isn't publicly visible yet (draft, cancelled, or a future Visible From date).

The row actions are:

• View (eye icon) — opens a read-only summary panel. For live competitions this panel always includes a buy-out line (see Watch for buy-out risk).
• Edit (pencil) — opens the edit page.
• View sales forecast (chart icon) — only on active competitions that have sold at least one ticket. See Forecast sales.
• Duplicate — see Duplicate a competition.
• Archive (box icon) — only on ended competitions that aren't already archived.
• Delete (bin) — see Archive or delete a competition.

Some of these buttons only appear if your admin account has the matching competition permission (write for create/edit/duplicate and the sales forecast icon, delete, archive). If a colleague can see a button you can't, ask whoever manages admin roles to adjust your permissions.

Check how one competition is doing

The View (eye icon) panel ends with a Profit & Loss Analysis block for that competition alone. Four cards:

• Gross Revenue — everything customers spent on this competition, including site credit they redeemed at checkout. This is your sales figure: it tells you how well the competition is selling, whatever people paid with.
• Cash Revenue — the part that actually arrived as card money. Credit spending is not counted here, because that credit was issued earlier and earns you nothing when it comes back.
• Total Costs — prize costs you have actually incurred, plus whichever future costs you have toggled in below the figure, plus payment gateway fees if you tick Include gateway fees. The caption underneath always spells out what is in the total, for example "Realised + Main prize + Fees".
• Profit / Loss — Cash Revenue minus Total Costs, with the margin underneath. Green for profit, red for loss.

Gross Revenue sitting well above Cash Revenue means a large share of this competition's entries were paid for with site credit. That is useful on its own: it tells you how much of the demand you are funding with credit you gave away.

Profit is deliberately measured on cash only, so it stays comparable across competitions no matter how much credit was in play.

Total Costs starts at what you have actually spent. Underneath it sit up to three switches, each layering one future cost on top. Flip them independently to see what the competition looks like if that cost lands:

• + Main prize — the face value of the main prize if every remaining winner is drawn.
• + Instant wins — the cost of instant win prizes nobody has claimed yet, at full value.
• + Cash awarded — the face value of cash already won on this competition. A cash main prize that has not been drawn yet is left out here, because + Main prize already covers it, so the two never double-count.

A switch only appears when there is something for it to add, so a competition with everything settled shows none of them. With any switch on, the Profit / Loss card reads Projected profit or Projected loss, so a figure that includes costs you have not paid yet is never mistaken for the realised position.

Your switch settings are remembered, including after you close the panel or reload, so you can work down a list of competitions on the same basis without setting them each time.

Cash prize withdrawals cannot be traced back to a single competition, so a note explains that cash awarded is not costed automatically and points you at the switch that gives you a face-value ceiling. That is usually + Cash awarded, or + Main prize when all of the cash is a main prize nobody has drawn yet.

For site-wide figures across a date range, use the Revenue report instead.

When the revenue looks too low for the tickets sold

If a competition is half sold but has taken almost nothing, check the split above the revenue cards before you report a problem. It usually is not one.

Tickets won as prizes in other competitions count towards this competition's total, because they are real entries held by real customers. They just did not earn this competition any money — the customer paid the competition that gave them away.

When any of this competition's tickets arrived that way, the panel shows a green and amber bar with two figures under it:

• Bought — tickets customers paid for here, and the money that came in.
• Awarded free — tickets won as prizes elsewhere, and what they would have been worth at this competition's ticket price.

A competition showing 52% allocated with 83% of that awarded free has only really sold the other 17%. The revenue card is correct; it is measuring a much smaller number of tickets than the percentage suggests.

Open Where the free tickets came from to see which competitions sent them, how many each sent, and what each of those competitions took at the till. That last column is the money that paid for the prize. A source showing £0 is a free-entry competition giving tickets away without taking anything, which is the only part genuinely not covered.

This is also the number to watch when you are deciding whether a competition will pay for itself. Giving away four or five free tickets for every one sold is a perfectly good way to run a big prize, as long as the competitions feeding it are covering the cost. The breakdown is what lets you check that rather than assume it.

Competitions that never received a prize ticket show none of this, which is most of them.

Create a competition

Click Create Competition at the top of the list. The wizard has four steps — Details, Settings, Winner, Review — and you can click a completed step's number to jump back to it. Required fields are validated as you go; if anything is missing when you click Create Competition, the form lists every problem and jumps you to the first one.

Step 1 — Details

• Competition Title (required, at least 3 characters) — the main title, used for search engines, the URL and AI copy generation.
• Display Title (optional) — a shorter title shown on competition cards.
• End Prize Name (optional) — a simple prize name shown near the instant wins, for instant-win-focused competitions.
• Summary (optional) — a short attention-grabbing intro. See Generate copy with AI.
• Description (optional) — the full description. Supports Markdown: links, bold, italic and lists.
• Prize Image (optional) — pick from your Media Library or upload a new image.
• Video URL (optional) — a YouTube or Vimeo URL. A video player appears on the public competition page. Good for walk-arounds, unboxings and prize teasers.
• Tags (optional) — attach existing tags, or type a new name and pick Create tag to make one on the spot. Tags are applied once the competition is created.

Step 2 — Settings

• Start Date & Time and End Date & Time (both required; end must be after start).
• Visible From Date & Time (optional) — when the competition appears on your public site. Must be on or before the start date. Leave empty for immediate visibility once active. See Schedule when a competition appears.
• Total Tickets (required, 1 to 10,000,000).
• Price Per Ticket (required; 0 makes it a free competition).
• Max Per Order (optional) — the most tickets one checkout can contain. This is your hardest cap: it stops a single order scooping a large share of the competition, which is the main sniping risk near the end. The field suggests roughly 2% of your ticket pool.
• Max Per User (optional) — a softer ceiling across all of a customer's orders; the suggestion is roughly 5% of the pool. Because the per-order cap is what blocks sniping, this one can be higher.
• Default Ticket Quantity (optional) — the quantity pre-selected when customers open the competition. It also drives the Quick Buy amounts on the competition card (roughly 50% / 100% / 150% of this value, snapped to round numbers). Leave blank to use price-based defaults.
• Instant Win Reveal Type — how instant wins are revealed after purchase (see Choose a reveal game). Instant win prizes themselves are configured after the competition is created — the form recommends saving as Draft until your prizes are set up.

Step 2 also carries the feature toggles, each covered in its own section below: Early Bird Pricing, App Exclusive Competition, Exclude from Wallet Credit, the two jackpot exclusions, Access Code Protection and Eligibility Criteria.

Step 3 — Winner

• Winner Selection Mode (required):
  • Automatic — the system randomly picks the winner.
  • Manual — you choose when to draw on Admin → Draws, using Sold only, Full range, or Manual entry for an off-site result. Choose Manual to control the reveal during a live draw.
• Number of Winners — up to 100, and never more than the ticket count. If you set it equal to Total Tickets you'll see a warning that every ticket will win. If you want every prize to go to a different person, set Max Per User to 1: with one ticket each, every winner is guaranteed to be a different person, and everyone has equal odds.
• Main Prize Type — see Choose the main prize type.

Step 4 — Review

A summary of everything you've set, plus the launch status:

• Draft — not visible to customers yet (recommended while you finish instant wins and imagery).
• Active — visible immediately.

Click Create Competition. You'll see "Competition created! Preparing tickets…" and land on the new competition's edit page, where a banner tracks the ticket pool being generated (see The ticket pool banner).

Generate copy with AI

On both the create wizard and the edit page's Details tab, the Summary and Description fields have AI buttons that write copy from your competition title:

1. Enter the Competition Title first — the buttons are disabled without it.
2. Click the sparkle Generate button next to the Summary or Description field (labelled Generate Summary and Generate Description on the edit page), or Generate Both to fill both at once.
3. The generated text fills the field(s); edit it as much as you like before saving.

The AI only uses the title as input, so a descriptive title ("iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB Giveaway") produces much better copy than a vague one.

Choose the main prize type

The main prize (what the draw winner receives) can be one of four types:

• Physical Prize — you fulfil it manually after the draw. Requires a Main Prize Cost (what the prize costs you, used for profit/loss calculations). Optionally add a Cash Alternative (a withdrawable cash amount the winner can choose instead) and/or a Credit Alternative (site credit instead — non-withdrawable, typically set higher than the cash figure to make it attractive).

• Site Credit — the amount is credited automatically to the winner's site credit wallet (non-withdrawable).

• Cash — credited automatically to the winner's withdrawable cash wallet. Optionally add a Credit Alternative the winner can choose instead (typically ~20% higher to incentivise keeping it on site).

• Competition Tickets — the winner receives free tickets in one or more other competitions:

  1. Click Add Target for each target competition.
  2. Pick the target and set a Ticket Quantity per winner. Targets that are sold out or already added are greyed out.
  3. Watch the warnings: the form flags targets that are more than 50% sold ("may sell out before your competition ends") or ending within a week. Each winner receives the full quantity, so with multiple winners the total commitment is winners × quantity.
  4. The target has to be open for the rest of this competition's run. The editor blocks the save if a target has not opened yet, or if it ends before this competition does. A target that has not opened yet is the one to watch: its prize numbers are already set aside the moment its tickets are created, so free tickets landing there early would take those prizes before anyone else can buy in. If you want to give tickets in a competition you are launching later, launch it first, then set this one up. A target that opened after this competition did is fine, as long as it is open now, so a long-running competition can point at anything live alongside it.

  Best practice: choose large, long-running target competitions that are unlikely to sell out.

For post-draw handling — notifying winners, fulfilment, alternatives — see Winners.

Publish a draft competition

There is no separate Publish button; publishing is a status change:

1. Open the competition and go to the Settings tab.
2. Change Status from Draft to Active.
3. Click Save.

The Active option is disabled while the ticket pool is still being created — you'll see "Cannot activate: ticket pool is still being created" until it finishes. Active competitions must also have an end date in the future.

Before you publish, use the Preview Competition button (top right of the edit page) to see exactly what customers will see.

Schedule when a competition appears

Visible From (Settings tab) controls when the competition appears on your public site, separately from the Start Date (when entries open). Use it to line up a launch: set the competition Active now with a Visible From of Friday 6pm, and it stays hidden until then.

While hidden, the competitions list shows the amber Hidden badge, and the copy-URL button copies a preview link (?preview=1) that you can share internally or with a partner for sign-off. Customers without the preview link can't see the page.

Visible From must be on or before the Start Date.

End, extend or cancel a competition

All three are done from the Status and date fields on the Settings tab.

End early: set Status to Ended and save. Entries close immediately. The competition then appears with your other ended competitions ready for its draw — run it from Draws.

Extend / postpone the draw: move the End Date & Time later and save before the competition ends. This postpones an end-time draw, but an automatic competition can still draw early if it sells out. See Automatic vs manual draws. Be thoughtful about extending a competition that customers entered expecting a particular draw date — announce the change prominently, and avoid doing it repeatedly.

Cancel: set Status to Cancelled and save. The public page is taken off general listings. Cancelling does not automatically refund anyone — refund each order from Orders, where the cancel/refund flow includes a "Cancelled Competition" reason. Plan your customer communications before you flip the status.

Edit a competition — the six tabs

Open a competition from the list to reach the edit page. The header shows its status badge and a View Competition (or Preview Competition) button; a fixed bar at the bottom holds Cancel and Save.

The page is organised into six tabs:

Tab	What lives there
Details	Title, display title, URL slug, end prize name, summary and description (with AI buttons), prize image, video URL, and the competition's tags.
Settings	Status, start/end/visible-from dates, ticket pool size and price, per-order/per-user caps, default quantity, and the feature toggles: App Exclusive, Exclude from Wallet Credit, the two jackpot exclusions, Access Code, Eligibility Criteria, Early Bird Pricing, Quantity Discounts, Bundle Offers.
Prize & Draw	Winner selection mode, number of winners, main prize type and its amounts/alternatives/ticket targets.
Instant Wins	The reveal type, prize stats and a read-only prize list, plus the Manage Prizes button that opens the full instant wins manager.
Entries	Entry stats, the searchable entry list, CSV export and the Add Entries panel.
Gallery	Extra images shown alongside the main prize image on the public page.

Fix save errors quickly

Validation errors are routed to the tab they belong to:

• Each tab shows an error count on its label.
• The active tab shows an error summary listing each problem — click an entry to scroll to and focus the offending field.
• The bottom bar names the broken fields (or the offending tabs when there are many); clicking a name jumps you there.
• When errors exist the Save button reads Review errors and clicking it takes you to the first problem instead of failing silently.

Change the URL slug safely

The URL Slug field on the Details tab sets the competition's public address. Leave it empty to auto-generate from the title; otherwise use only lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens (minimum 3 characters). When you save a slug change you're redirected to the competition's new admin address, and the public URL changes immediately — old links to the previous slug will stop working, so avoid changing it once a competition is being promoted. If the slug is already taken you'll see "That URL slug is already in use by another competition".

Manage the image gallery

The Gallery tab holds additional images that appear alongside the main prize image on the public competition page.

• Click Add Image (or Add First Image) to pick multiple images from your Media Library or upload new ones. Images already in the gallery are disabled in the picker.
• Hover an image to move it left or right; a Save Order button appears once you've reordered — click it to persist the new order.
• Hover and click the bin icon to remove an image from the gallery (the file stays in your media library).

Gallery changes save independently of the main Save button.

The ticket pool banner

When a competition is created (or its ticket pool is rebuilt), every ticket number has to be generated before customers can buy. Until the pool is ready, a banner at the top of the edit page shows progress — a spinner and a "tickets created" progress bar.

• While the pool is generating you cannot set the competition Active.
• If generation fails, the banner turns red with an error message and a Retry button. Click Retry, and if it fails repeatedly contact support.
• If generation is interrupted part-way (a platform update while your pool was building, for example), the platform picks it back up on its own within a minute or two. If it can't, the banner turns amber with "Ticket creation was interrupted" and a Retry button. Click it and the build carries on from where it stopped; nothing already created is lost. If the build is in fact still running you'll see "Ticket pool creation is still in progress" and nothing changes.
• While the pool is generating the Total Tickets field is locked. Wait for the banner to finish (or retry it) before changing the ticket count.
• When it completes you'll see "Ticket pool created successfully" and the Active status unlocks.

Set up early bird pricing

Reward early purchasers with a lower ticket price. Toggle on Early Bird Pricing (create wizard Step 2, or the Settings tab when editing):

1. Choose the Discount Type — a percentage off (1–75%) or a fixed amount off (up to the ticket price).

2. Enter the Discount Value.

3. Set at least one end condition:

   • End Date & Time — must fall within the competition's start and end dates.
   • Ticket threshold ("End after tickets sold") — early bird ends once this many tickets have sold in total. Must be less than the total ticket count.

   If you set both, early bird ends at whichever comes first.

When you use a ticket threshold and a single order crosses it, only the tickets still inside the early bird allowance get the discount — the rest of that order are charged at the regular price. For example, with 3 early bird tickets left and a customer buying 8, the first 3 are discounted and the remaining 5 are full price. Their basket and checkout show the split so the total is always what they'll be charged.

A live preview shows the discounted price and the saving per ticket as you type. The preview is indicative — the live price reverts automatically the moment the cap or end date is reached.

Reward bulk buys with quantity discounts

Quantity discounts reprice every ticket in the order once the basket hits a tier's threshold. They're configured on the edit page only (Settings tab) — create the competition first, then add tiers.

1. Toggle on Quantity Discounts.
2. Click Add tier for each tier (up to five) and fill in:
   • Tickets ≥ — the threshold (minimum 2, and each tier needs a different threshold).
   • Discount — % Off (under 100%) or £ Off (a fixed amount can't exceed half the ticket price).
   • Value.
3. Save.

Higher thresholds must give a deeper discount than lower ones — the editor warns on any tier that breaks the rule before you save. If someone else edits the competition while your tier panel is open, saving warns you to reload first so you don't overwrite their changes.

What customers see: the ticket slider marks each tier threshold, a nudge appears as they approach one ("Add 3 more to save 20%"), and the whole basket reprices when they cross it. Set two thresholds close together and they land on almost the same spot on the slider, so only the higher one is marked and the lower one is left off to keep the labels readable. Nothing is lost by that: every tier still applies at checkout and still appears as a quick-pick button under the slider. If early bird pricing is also live, customers automatically get whichever gives the better per-ticket price.

Reward bulk buys with free tickets

A bundle offer gives customers free tickets to a competition of your choice when they buy enough tickets in this one. They still pay full price for the tickets they buy — the reward is extra entries rather than a lower price. The target can be a different competition or this same one.

Set them up on the edit page (Settings tab), under Bundle Offers.

1. Toggle on Bundle Offers.
2. Click Add offer for each one (up to five) and fill in:
   • Tickets ≥ — how many they must buy. One is allowed, so "buy 1, get 1 free" is a valid offer, and each offer needs a different threshold.
   • Free tickets — how many they get, up to 100.
   • Limit per customer — how many times one person can claim this offer. Leave it blank for the standard limit of 10. See below for why this matters.
   • Free entries — tick this to let postal and manually added entries claim the offer. It is off to start with.
   • To competition — where the free tickets go. This competition is listed first and marked (this competition) — pick it to give bonus entries to the same draw. Competitions you have not published yet are listed too, marked (draft): the offer saves with a reminder and stays dormant until you publish them. A competition that is published but has not opened yet is marked with the date it opens, and cannot be used: see below.
3. Save.

The target has to be open when this competition starts. The editor blocks the save if you pick a target that has not opened yet, and targets in the list that are still to open show the date they open so you can tell them apart from the live ones at a glance. A target that ends before this competition does is allowed, and warns instead: the offer simply stops awarding once that competition closes, which is fine for a weekly target under a longer-running competition.

This catches out the "buy now, get tickets in next week's launch" idea, which sounds reasonable and cannot be made to work. A competition's prize-winning ticket numbers are set aside when its tickets are created, before it opens to the public. Free tickets landing there ahead of the launch would take those prizes on the spot, days before anyone who waited for the advertised start could buy a single ticket. If you want to run that campaign, open the target competition first and then set up the offer pointing at it.

The threshold has to be something a customer could actually buy in one go. If you ask for more tickets than this competition has in total, or more than your Max Tickets Per Order or Max Tickets Per User caps allow, the editor blocks the save and names the limit that's in the way — otherwise you'd have an offer nobody could ever qualify for. Either lower the threshold or raise the cap on the Settings tab.

Only the highest offer a customer qualifies for is given, and only once. With a "buy 20, get 2 free" offer, someone buying 40 gets 2 free tickets, not 4. If you want bigger baskets rewarded more, add a second offer at a higher threshold — and it must give more free tickets than the smaller one, which the editor checks before you save.

Why the limit per customer matters

An offer is claimed per order, so the same customer can claim it again on their next order. Without a limit, someone can split what they were going to spend anyway into lots of small orders and claim the offer every time: on a "buy 1, get 20 free" offer, twenty separate single-ticket orders earn 400 free tickets where one order of twenty earns 20.

Limit per customer is what stops that. Once someone has claimed the offer that many times it stops being shown to them, so nobody pays expecting a bonus they can no longer get, and they still get everything they bought. Ten is the standard limit and is generous enough that a genuine repeat customer never notices it. Lower it on an offer you expect to be popular, or where the free tickets are valuable.

Watch the total, not the single claim. An offer giving 2 free tickets with a limit of 10 commits 20 tickets to one customer, and the editor warns you against that full figure when the target competition cannot cover it. The limit also applies per competition: if five of your competitions all offer tickets in the same prize draw, one customer can claim up to the limit on each of them.

The count follows the offer, not the row in the editor, so editing an offer does not hand everybody a fresh set of claims. Changing the Tickets ≥ threshold does start a new count, because that is a different offer. Changing how many free tickets it gives does not.

If you refund an order that claimed the offer, the free tickets go back too and that claim is returned to the customer.

Postal and manually added entries

Postal entries and entries you add by hand are usually for one ticket, so on a low threshold they would claim an offer every single time. They are therefore excluded by default, and tick Free entries on an offer to include them.

Both routes behave the same way once you tick it, whether the entry arrived by post or you added it from the admin.

You can run bundle offers and quantity discounts on the same competition, including at the same threshold.

As you build each offer, the editor shows what it will cost you per customer who qualifies, based on the target competition's ticket price. Watch this figure: an offer on a busy competition is a commitment repeated for every qualifying order, not a one-off.

When the free tickets can't be given

The target competition may sell out or cap how many tickets one person can hold. When that happens the customer receives whatever still fits, and their confirmation email and order page explain why the rest couldn't be added. Free tickets are a bonus on top of what the customer bought, not something they paid for, so nothing is refunded or credited and you don't have to intervene. Everything they actually bought is unaffected.

Customers who already hold the maximum number of tickets in the target competition stop seeing the offer altogether, so nobody is promised free tickets they can't receive.

If the target competition ends or is archived after you set the offer up, the offer simply stops running and disappears from your site. It starts working again if you point it at a live competition. Offers pointing at a competition that has since ended stay saved in your editor (marked "no longer active"), so a routine save never loses them.

You can also set offers up before anything is live. A draft competition can carry an offer pointing at itself, and an offer can point at a competition you have not published yet: both save with a reminder rather than an error, stay dormant, and start running the moment the target competition is published. So a forgotten draft never leaves an offer silently dead, the dashboard's Needs your attention panel lists any offers on live competitions whose target is not live.

You'll be warned when saving if an offer promises more tickets than the target has left, or if the target's per-person limit is below the number you're promising. Both still save — they're warnings, not errors — but the second one in particular means most customers will receive fewer free tickets than the offer advertises, which is rarely what you want.

Free tickets behave exactly like bought ones: they go into the draw, and they can win instant wins.

If you refund an order that earned free tickets, those tickets are taken back automatically and returned to their competition.

To check a particular customer got their free tickets, open their paid order: see Check a customer got their free tickets.

What customers see: the ticket slider shows what they'll get as they pass each threshold, a nudge appears as they approach one ("Add 5 more for 2 free tickets to Ninja Blender"), and the free tickets appear on the order summary, the confirmation email, and their account.

Restrict who can enter

Require an access code

Gate a competition behind a secret code — useful for VIP lists, influencer drops, email-subscriber rewards or a soft launch.

1. Toggle on Access Code Protection (create wizard Step 2 or Settings tab).
2. Enter the code: 4–20 alphanumeric characters. The field uppercases as you type and strips anything else; customers can enter it in any case.
3. Save.

Customers must enter the code before they can add tickets to their basket. Anyone who bought before you added the code keeps their entries — the gate isn't retroactive.

Entrants have to be logged in to unlock. A logged-out visitor sees a Log in to unlock button instead of the code box, and comes straight back to the competition once they've signed in or registered. Entering needs an account either way, so asking first saves them unlocking a competition they then can't enter. Bear this in mind when you write the email or post that circulates the code: send people to the competition page and let the page handle the sign-in.

Set eligibility criteria

Restrict entry to customers who meet requirements. Toggle on Eligibility Criteria and add one or more criteria from the dropdown (each type can be used once):

• Minimum Card Spend — a spend amount (£) over a period: All Time, Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, Last Year or Since Competition Started. This counts the customer's completed card payments across your whole site in the chosen period, not just their spend on this competition. Items sitting in a basket don't count until they're paid for.
• Minimum Membership Age — account must be at least this many days old.
• Never Won Main Prize — excludes previous main-prize winners. No configuration needed.
• Never Won Instant Win — excludes previous instant-win winners. No configuration needed.

Customers must meet all criteria you add, and you can combine eligibility with an access code — both gates must be cleared.

Customers see their progress towards a spend or membership criterion on the competition page ("£4.00 / £10.00", and "Spend £6.00 more to enter"), so they know exactly what's left to do.

Run a "spend £10 this week" free competition

Since Competition Started is the period to use when a free competition is meant to drive spend rather than reward spend customers have already made.

Set the competition's start date to when you're posting it, add a Minimum Card Spend criterion with the amount you want and the period Since Competition Started, and only customers who spend that much after the competition goes live can enter. Spend from before it started doesn't count.

The other periods count backwards from right now, which works against you here. On a competition posted today with Last 7 Days selected, a customer who spent £10 last Wednesday qualifies straight away without spending anything on your promotion, and a customer who qualified on day one drops back out a week later as their spend falls outside the window.

Since Competition Started has neither problem: the window starts when your competition starts and grows as it runs.

The qualifying window follows the Start Date on the Settings tab. If you change that date, the window moves with it, so avoid editing it once the competition is live and being promoted. Two things to watch when setting it up:

• If you build the competition as a draft with today's start date and only publish it days later, the window has been open the whole time, and spend from before anyone knew about the competition will count.
• Duplicating a competition copies its dates but not its eligibility criteria, so if you re-add the criterion remember to move the start date to the new run.

What counts as spend

Minimum Card Spend counts card payments only, after any discounts and site credit have come off, and net of refunds. Tickets a customer pays for entirely with site credit don't count towards it.

Eligibility is checked when a customer adds tickets to their basket. If their spend later drops below the threshold — because you refund or cancel a qualifying order — entries they have already taken are not removed automatically.

Make a competition app-exclusive

Toggle on App Exclusive Competition and only customers using your mobile app can enter. Good for rewarding app adoption or driving installs.

Exclude a competition from wallet credit

Toggle on Exclude from Wallet Credit to require full card payment — customers can't spend site credit on this competition. Useful for high-value prizes, promotional loss-leaders, or partner competitions where revenue must be real money. See Wallets & Withdrawals for how credit normally works.

Keep a competition out of the jackpot

Two toggles control how a competition interacts with your site-wide jackpot, and they are independent of each other:

• Exclude from Jackpot Building — spend on this competition does not grow the pot. The rest of a customer's basket still does.
• Exclude from Jackpot Entries — spend on this competition earns no chances to win the jackpot.

So a competition can grow the pot without playing for it (useful for a loss-leader you don't want to pay out on), or play for it without growing it. Leave both off and the competition behaves like every other one.

These do nothing unless you have a jackpot running — see Jackpot.

Add instant win prizes

Instant wins are prizes attached to specific ticket numbers — the customer wins the moment they buy that ticket. Open the competition's Instant Wins tab and click Manage Prizes to reach the full manager.

Set up prizes while the competition is a Draft: once tickets have been sold, editing is heavily restricted to protect customers who already bought (see What locks after sales).

Read the cost and profitability cards

The top of the instant wins manager is a financial summary:

• Revenue Potential — total tickets × ticket price (your maximum take if it sells out).
• Total Prize Cost — the combined value of all instant win prizes, broken down by type.
• Net Margin — revenue potential minus prize costs, as an amount and a percentage. It turns red if you've configured a loss-maker.
• Include main prize in cost calculations — tick this toggle to add the main prize cost to the totals; three extra cards then break out Main Prize Cost, Instant Win Costs and Combined Costs. (A Competition Tickets main prize can't be costed here because its value depends on the target competitions' ticket prices — the summary tells you when it's excluded.)
• Total Prizes / Win Rate / Claimed / Unclaimed — how many tickets carry a prize, the odds ("1 in N tickets wins"), and how many prizes have already been won.
• Cash Alt Total / Credit Alt Total — appear when any prizes carry alternatives, showing your worst-case liability if every winner chose them.

Sanity-check Net Margin and Win Rate before you publish — this screen is where a mispriced competition shows up first.

Add a single prize (or a batch)

Click + Add Prize:

1. Create Prize — choose From Scratch (enter details manually) or From Template (pick a saved prize from your reusable template bank; you can still click Override to tweak details for this competition). Templates are managed on the Instant Wins page.
2. Ticket Assignment:
   • Random Tickets — enter a Quantity and the platform assigns that many prizes to randomly chosen tickets that don't already carry one. The form shows how many tickets are still available.
   • Specific Ticket — enter the exact ticket number (1 to the ticket pool size).
3. Prize Type and its details:
   • Physical Prize — Prize Cost (for profit and loss reporting), plus optional Cash Alternative and Credit Alternative. There is no separate advertised-value field; see Instant Wins for how storefront values are handled.
   • Site Credit — Credit Amount (non-withdrawable, auto-credited on win).
   • Cash — Cash Amount (withdrawable, auto-credited on win), optional Credit Alternative.
   • Competition Tickets — target competition and number of tickets (auto-awarded on win). You can't target the competition you're adding prizes to, sold-out targets are greyed out, and the form blocks saving if the total commitment exceeds the target's remaining tickets — with random-quantity batches the commitment is quantity × tickets per win.
4. Prize Title — auto-suggested from the type details (e.g. "£10 Site Credit", "5 Tickets - Tesla Comp") the moment you fill them in; overwrite it freely.
5. Prize Description (optional) and Image (optional) — once the title is set, up to three suggested images from your media library appear; click one to use it, or pick/upload manually. Prizes without an image still display fine.
6. Click Create Prize (or Create N Prizes for a random batch — every prize in the batch gets the same details).

Random batches of two or more prizes on a draft or active competition are created in the background. The form closes as soon as the batch is safely queued, and Prize creation shows queued, running or failed batches with committed progress. Completed and discarded batches disappear from this panel, including after a refresh; when nothing is outstanding, the panel disappears too. Completed creation is recorded in the audit log. You can leave the page and return without stopping the work. Batches on the same competition run in the order submitted; a later batch waits until the earlier one finishes. Retry a failed batch. For a draft-only batch, discard removes that batch's partially created prizes and releases the queue. Finish outstanding creation before publishing the competition.

On an active competition, each chunk selects available tickets while coordinating with checkout; reserved, purchased and cancelled tickets are excluded. Customers can keep buying during creation. If too few eligible tickets remain, the batch reports the shortfall and keeps its committed progress. Retry when tickets become available, or choose Stop batch to keep all prizes already created and release the queue. Live batches never delete committed prizes when stopped, even if the competition is later changed back to draft. Completed creation and stopped batches are recorded in the audit log. Creation checks the competition is still open before each chunk; if it ends, any chunk already in flight may finish and the remaining work fails with an explanation.

Bulk add prizes from CSV

For large prize sets, click + Bulk Add (CSV) and paste CSV rows (no header, one prize per line) into the text box, then click Create Prizes. Columns, in order:

ticketNumber,prizeTitle,prizeDescription,prizeType,creditAmount,physicalPrizeCost,targetCompetitionId,ticketQuantity

• ticketNumber — required on every row; 1 to your ticket count.
• prizeType — PHYSICAL, SITE_CREDIT or COMPETITION_TICKETS (defaults to PHYSICAL). Leave unused columns empty but keep the commas.
• creditAmount — required for SITE_CREDIT.
• physicalPrizeCost — required for PHYSICAL.
• targetCompetitionId and ticketQuantity — both required for COMPETITION_TICKETS.

Example (a Copy Example button in the dialog copies this for you):

42,Nintendo Switch OLED,Nintendo Switch OLED Console with controllers,PHYSICAL,,299.99,,
156,£10 Site Credit,£10 added to your wallet,SITE_CREDIT,10.00,,,
789,10 Free Tickets,Win 10 tickets to Tesla Comp,COMPETITION_TICKETS,,,,abc123-uuid,10

Rows are validated as a set — one bad line stops the whole import and nothing is created, so check each row against the column list before you paste.

Review, edit and delete prizes

Below the actions, the prize table lists every instant win with its ticket number, title, type, cost, alternatives and claimed/available status. Search by title, description or ticket number; filter by claimed/unclaimed; page through up to 500 per page.

• Edit (pencil) opens the prize panel. Before any sales, everything is editable — including moving the prize to a different ticket number (the panel warns you that this reassigns the prize).
• Delete (bin) removes an unclaimed prize — but the button disappears entirely once the competition has sales.

What locks after sales

Once even one ticket has sold, the edit panel switches to protected mode ("This competition has sold tickets"):

• All prizes: the description and image stay editable.
• Physical prizes: the prize cost and product link also stay editable. Existing advertised values are retained when saving these edits.
• Everything else — ticket number, title, type, amounts, alternatives — is locked, and prizes can no longer be deleted.

Get the prize set right in Draft; after launch you're limited to cosmetic fixes.

Choose a reveal game

The Instant Win Reveal Type (set on the create wizard's Settings step, or the edit page's Instant Wins tab) controls the animation customers play when a ticket wins:

Type	Experience
Default	Simple reveal modal
Scratchcard	Scratch to reveal
Balloon Pop	Pop balloons
Wheel Spin	Spin a prize wheel
Coin Flip	Flip a coin
Hook a Duck	Fairground duck hooking
Fishing Pond	Cast a line
Bingo	UK 90-ball bingo card
Darts	Throw darts
Plinko	Drop a puck down the pegboard
Gem Shatter	Tap to shatter a gem
Piñata	Three swings to crack it open
Pack Opening	Tear open a foil pack and flip through the cards
Claw Machine	Steer the claw and grab a capsule
Fireworks	Launch a rocket for every ticket
Penalty Shootout	Beat the keeper from the spot
High Striker	Swing the mallet and ring the bell
Lucky Dip	Pick a parcel from the dip crate
Basketball	One free throw per ticket; sink the basket or rim out
Rock Paper Scissors	Throw a hand against the house
Meteor Blast	Fire a laser at drifting space rocks
Mini Golf	Pick a line and putt; sink it or lip out
Mainframe Breach	Run the exploit through three firewall layers
The Derby	One horse race per ticket; first past the post or beaten
Lockpick	Set the pins and turn the cylinder; crack it or the stack drops

Pack Opening turns each of the customer's tickets into a trading card. They spin a carousel of packs and pick one (a cosmetic choice that doesn't change the result), tear it open, then flip the cards one at a time: a winning ticket is a holographic prize card, a non-winning ticket is stamped "No prize". Small orders are padded with a few extra cards so a single ticket still opens a proper pack; orders over ten cards split into booster packs. The outcome is decided at checkout; the pack is only the reveal.

Want to see them before going live? The admin Test Instant Win Games playground lets you play every game with sample prizes, no purchase needed — see Instant Wins.

Watch for buy-out risk

A competition can be "bought out" when someone buys every remaining ticket in one go — winning every unclaimed instant win in the process, because each unclaimed instant sits on an unsold ticket. As a competition sells down, the cost of the remaining tickets shrinks while the unclaimed instants keep their value, so it can eventually become profitable for a player (or a syndicate) to sweep the rest.

This is judged on unclaimed instants only. The main prize isn't part of it — it's drawn across all tickets, sold and unsold, so buying the remainder doesn't win it.

The platform checks live competitions automatically:

• Buy-out risk (amber icon next to the ticket count in the list) — unclaimed instants now cover most of the cost of the remaining tickets. Not yet profitable to sweep, but heading that way.
• Exploitable (red icon) — the unclaimed instants are worth more than the remaining tickets cost. Someone could buy out the competition at a profit.

Hover the icon for the exact figures: cost of the remaining tickets, unclaimed instant value, and (when exploitable) the profit on offer, plus whether your per-user cap protects you. Opening a live competition's View panel always shows a buy-out line — flagged or not — with the buy-out cost and the instant drop rate (the chance any one remaining ticket wins an instant, as a percentage and "1 in N"). No icon on a live competition means the check ran and found nothing, not that it was skipped.

The cost of the remaining tickets is priced at today's live price, not the full ticket price. Any sale you're running is included — an active discount, early bird pricing, and the bulk-discount tier the quantity qualifies for, since a buy-out is a bulk purchase. Start a sale on a competition and the buy-out cost drops accordingly, which can flag a competition that looked safe at full price.

The unclaimed instant value tracks any Instant Win Boost that is running. While a boost is live, each boosted unclaimed instant counts at its boosted amount, so the unclaimed instant value rises (and the buy-out cost falls) for the length of the window. The View panel and the list icon's tooltip say how much of it is boost uplift. It falls straight back when the boost ends or is cancelled. A boost that is scheduled but not yet started doesn't count.

Two things sit outside the figure, both deliberately. Your Max Per Order and Max Per User caps are ignored, because the figure is the worst case — a syndicate spreading purchases across accounts isn't stopped by them. And promotion codes aren't counted, so a buyer holding a code pays a little less than the figure shown. Treat it as the cost to beat, not an exact quote.

If a competition is flagged, your lever is the ticket caps: set or tighten Max Per Order and Max Per User so no single account can buy the competition out. A capped competition can still be swept by a syndicate spreading purchases across accounts, so keep an eye on Account Flags for linked accounts. Prizes with no value set are excluded from the figures — the panel tells you how many, so fill in prize costs if you want an accurate reading.

Manage entries

Open the competition's Entries tab.

Read the entry stats

• Total Entries — every ticket number in the pool.
• Purchased — sold and confirmed.
• Available — still on sale. Before a draw, this is how much headroom is left; it's also the figure the buy-out check works from.
• Reserved — in customers' baskets right now. Reservations release automatically if the customer doesn't complete checkout.
• Unique Entrants — distinct customers with at least one ticket.

Search and filter the entry list

The table shows each entry's ticket number, customer (name and email), status, purchase time and order — click the order number to open the order details.

• Search by ticket number, customer name or email.
• Status filter: Purchased, Available, Reserved or Cancelled.
• Sort By Purchase Date, Ticket Number, User Name or User Email, with a Sort Descending checkbox.
• Clear Filters resets everything.

Export entries to CSV

Click Export CSV to download the competition's purchased entries as a spreadsheet (named with the competition slug and today's date). Use it for off-site draws, auditors, or free-entry compliance records. Unsold and reserved tickets aren't included.

Give free entries to customers (comped entries)

Click Add Entries and choose Pick Users:

1. Search and select one or more existing customer accounts by name or email.
2. Set Entries per User. The maximum is the lower of the competition's per-order and per-user caps, and the panel reminds you of the limits.
3. Click Add Entries for N Users.

One free order is created per customer with that many entries each; ticket numbers are assigned automatically. If a comped ticket lands on an instant win, the win triggers immediately — the confirmation message tells you how many instant wins were hit. Entries that couldn't be created (for example a customer already at their cap) are reported so you can follow up.

Record a postal entry

Free postal entries are a legal requirement for prize competitions in many setups. When one arrives:

1. Click Add Entries and choose Manual Entry (Postal).
2. Fill in the entrant's details — first name, last name, email and date of birth are required; phone and address fields are optional but worth recording as they're on the postcard.
3. Set the Number of Entries (capped by the competition's limits) and click Create Entry.

Ticket numbers are assigned automatically, instant wins trigger just like a purchase, and the entry appears in the list and CSV export alongside paid entries.

Forecast sales

For an active competition with at least one sale, open the forecast from the chart icon in the list or the Sales Forecast button at the top of the edit page. It opens in a side panel showing:

• A confidence badge for the projection.
• Projected Sell-Out date and days remaining (when a sell-out is on the cards).
• Current Pace vs Expected Pace in tickets per day, with a status message telling you whether you're ahead or behind.
• A Next 5 Days Forecast of expected tickets and revenue per day.
• Alerts and Recommendations — concrete prompts such as pushing marketing or reviewing the duration.

Use it to decide when to spend on promotion, whether to extend the end date, and when to schedule the draw.

Duplicate a competition

Use duplicate to rerun a successful format or build a seasonal variant without starting from scratch.

1. Click the Duplicate icon on the competition's row.
2. Confirm the dialog. The copy includes all settings, instant win prizes and gallery images, is created in Draft, and keeps the same start and end dates as the original.
3. You're taken straight to the new competition's edit page.

Instant win prizes come across with new random winning ticket positions. The prizes themselves are identical — same titles, same values, same number of them — and they still sit on the same set of ticket numbers, but which prize lands on which ticket is redrawn. So a rerun doesn't inherit the original's map of where the big prizes are.

That matters because past winners are public. Without the reshuffle, anyone holding the last run's winner list would know exactly where this run's top prizes sit — and you'd occasionally get the same prize won on the same ticket number twice, which looks rigged even though it isn't. If a customer raises that, the reshuffle is your answer. (With a full prize map it's vanishingly unlikely any single prize lands back where it was; on a competition with only a handful of instant wins, one can still happen to stay put.)

One thing to expect if you QA the copy against the original: the winning ticket numbers won't line up, and that is the feature working, not prizes going missing. The prize list is what to check — same prizes, same values, same count. The original competition is left completely untouched.

Before publishing the copy: update the dates, retitle it, check the slug, and review the copied instant win set. No entries, orders or winners are carried over.

Archive or delete a competition

Archive hides a finished competition from your working list while keeping all of its data — entries, orders, winners — intact:

1. Filter the list to Ended (the archive icon only appears on ended, unarchived competitions).
2. Click the archive box icon and confirm.
3. Archived competitions remain viewable under the Archived status filter.

Delete is stricter, because competitions with sales carry customer obligations:

• A competition with sold tickets can only be deleted once the draw is completed and all prizes are fulfilled — the confirmation dialog warns you, and the platform refuses otherwise.
• Deleting an unsold draft is immediate.

When in doubt, archive rather than delete.

Manage tags

Tags group competitions for filtering and merchandising on your public site. Manage them at Admin → Tags (/admin/tags); attach them to a competition on the edit page's Details tab, or in step 1 of the creation wizard, using the tag picker. If the tag you want doesn't exist yet, type its name into the picker and choose Create tag — no need to leave the page.

Create a tag

1. Click Create Tag.
2. Enter a Name (up to 50 characters). Optionally set a Slug (auto-generated if left empty), a Description, and a Colour — use the colour picker or type a hex code (a Clear button removes it); a live preview shows how the tag will look.
3. Click Create Tag.

Edit a tag and manage its competitions

Click the pencil on a tag row to edit its details. In edit mode the panel also shows Assigned Competitions:

• Click Add to open a competition picker and attach more competitions to the tag in bulk — handy when you'd rather work tag-first than open each competition.
• Click the × next to a competition to remove it from the tag.

Each row in the tags list shows how many competitions carry the tag. Deleting a tag removes it from all competitions (you'll be asked to confirm); the competitions themselves are untouched, and the tag drops out of the competitions list's tag filter.

Tags also give you a Tag filter on the competitions list itself — see Find a competition in the list.

Troubleshooting

I can't set the status to Active. The ticket pool is still being generated — the Status dropdown shows "Cannot activate: ticket pool is still being created". Wait for the banner to finish, or click Retry if it has failed. Also check the end date is in the future; active competitions can't end in the past.

The Save button says "Review errors". One or more fields are invalid. Look at the tab labels for error counts, click the field names in the bottom bar, or use the error summary at the top of the tab — each entry jumps to the offending field.

"That URL slug is already in use by another competition." Another competition (possibly archived) owns that slug. Pick a different slug, or free it up by changing the other competition's slug.

A customer says they can't see the competition. Check, in order: the status (Draft and Cancelled competitions are hidden), the Visible From date (a future date hides it — look for the Hidden badge in the list), and whether it's archived. Use the copy-URL button's preview link to confirm the page itself is fine.

A customer says their access code doesn't work. First check they're logged in — logged-out visitors get a Log in to unlock button rather than the code box, and some read that as the code being rejected. Otherwise: codes are 4–20 letters and numbers only and case-insensitive, so check for lookalike characters (O/0, I/1) and confirm the code saved on the Settings tab is what you circulated.

The buy-out icon appeared on a live competition. Read Watch for buy-out risk — tighten Max Per Order / Max Per User, and monitor Account Flags for syndicates.

The competition ended without selling out — what happens to the draw? Nothing is wrong: when you run the draw you choose whether to draw across sold tickets only or the full ticket range (with a redraw if an unsold number comes up). See Draws.

I need to change an instant win prize but the fields are greyed out. The competition has sales, so only the description, image and (for physical prizes) the cost and product link are editable — the rest is locked to protect customers who already bought. If a prize is genuinely wrong, contact support rather than working around it.

I can't delete a competition. If it has sold tickets, the draw must be completed and every prize fulfilled first. Archive it instead if you just want it out of the way.

Product links for physical main prizes

Add an optional Product link in the main prize settings when creating or editing a competition. Paste an HTTP or HTTPS retailer listing, such as an Amazon product page. This link is only visible to staff and appears as View product in Admin → Winners.

You can correct or clear it after sales or a win. All main-prize winners use the competition’s current link. Duplicating a competition copies the link. Switching to a non-physical prize clears it.