Instant Win Boosts

Make chosen instant win prizes pay more than usual, for a few hours only. "Find the £5,000, win £7,500 — 3 hours only." It is a way to push sales through a quiet evening once a competition has already banked enough profit to fund it.

Where to find it: on a competition's own instant wins page, Admin → Competitions → (your competition) → Instant Wins.

When a prize counts as boosted

A prize is boosted if its ticket was picked up while the boost was running. That is the moment the customer's ticket numbers were reserved for them — when they added the tickets to their basket and went to checkout, not when the payment finally cleared, and not when they open the reveal.

That is worth being clear about, because it is the whole point:

• A customer who buys during the boost and opens their reveal three days later still gets the boosted amount.
• A customer who bought yesterday and opens their reveal during the boost gets the normal amount.
• A customer who checks out at 8:59pm on a boost that ends at 9pm still gets the boosted amount, even if their card takes another minute to go through. They bought what you advertised.
• Someone who reserved their tickets before the boost started does not get it, even if they pay once it is running.
• Postal entries work exactly the same way, based on when the ticket was allocated to them.

So a boost gives people a reason to buy right now, which is what you are running it for.

Start a boost

1. Open the competition and go to its Instant Wins page.

2. Tick the prizes you want to boost. Only unclaimed cash and site credit prizes can be ticked — see What can be boosted. To boost just one prize, use the ⚡ action on its row instead.

3. Click ⚡ Boost selected. A slide-over panel opens, so you keep your place in the list.

   On a competition with thousands of prizes, don't tick them one at a time — click ⚡ Boost by group instead and see Boost every prize of a kind.

4. Under How much more do they pay?, choose:

   • Multiply — each prize pays a multiple of its own value. Pick x1.25, x1.5, x2 or x3, or type your own. A £5,000 find at x1.5 pays £7,500; a £100 find at x1.5 pays £150.
   • Set a value — every prize you ticked pays the same flat amount, whatever it was worth before.

5. Under When does it run?, choose Start now or Schedule it, then pick how long it runs for: 1, 3, 6 or 24 hours, or type your own. The panel tells you exactly when it will end.

6. Under What customers see, check the name and blurb. This is your site-wide boost branding — see Name your boost. Tick Theme this boost differently if this one competition needs its own name.

7. Optionally add an Internal label such as Sunday night push. Only you ever see it.

8. Read What it could cost. This is the number to stop on — see Know what it will cost you.

9. Click Start (or Schedule).

If you started it now, it goes live immediately. Customers already sitting on the competition page see the banner appear without reloading.

Boost every prize of a kind

A competition can hold tens of thousands of instant wins, and "boost every 50p find" is not something you want to tick one row at a time.

Click ⚡ Boost by group on the Instant Wins page. The panel lists every group of duplicate prizes with how many of each are still to be won:

£0.50 Site Credit      293 still to be won · £0.50 each
£1.00 Site Credit      196 still to be won · £1 each
£5.00 Cash              56 still to be won · £5 each

Tick the groups you want, set the dials the same way as any other boost, and every unclaimed prize in those groups is boosted together. Select all takes the lot.

Two things worth knowing:

• A group is counted when you start it, not when you opened the panel. Prizes are being won while you are choosing, so the number armed can be a little lower than the number listed. If the cost has moved by the time you press Start, the panel tells you the new figure and asks you to look again rather than starting a boost you never approved.
• Groups that would not gain are left out. Set a value of £50 and the £100 finds are skipped, listed with a reason, and excluded from the cost. See What can be boosted.

What can be boosted

Only cash and site credit prizes that nobody has won yet.

Prize type	Can it be boosted?
Cash	Yes
Site Credit	Yes
Physical prize	No
Competition tickets	No
Any prize already won	No

Physical prizes are left out because "boosting" a games console means swapping it for a better one, which is a different job. Competition-ticket prizes are worth whatever the target competition's tickets cost, which is not yours to change from here.

Rows that cannot be boosted show a crossed-out ⚡ with the reason on hover, and they cannot be ticked — so you cannot accidentally queue up a boost that would only half apply.

Only the prize's own amount is boosted. If a cash prize also offers a site credit alternative, that alternative is left alone — which usually means the boosted cash simply beats it, and the winner takes the cash.

Know what it will cost you

The What it could cost box in the panel updates as you change the dials. It shows:

• Each prize — its normal value struck through, what it will pay, and the extra.
• Worst case extra cost — what the boost costs you if every boosted prize gets found while it is running.
• Net margin if every boosted prize is found — your margin on this competition after that worst case.

This is a ceiling, not a forecast. Most boosts end with some prizes still unfound, and those cost you nothing. But the ceiling is the number to make the decision on: if the worst case takes your margin negative, it will take your margin negative.

While a boost is running, the Total Prize Cost and Net Margin cards at the top of the page show the same worst-case figures, marked with a ⚡. Hover either one to see what it was before the boost.

Watch a boost while it runs

A banner sits above the prize table for as long as a boost is scheduled or running. It shows:

• the boost's name and its internal label
• a live countdown to the end
• Worst case left — what it could still cost you, and how many boosted prizes are still out there
• Paid so far — the extra you have already handed out, and how many prizes have been found
• End boost early

Boosted rows in the table show their normal value struck through beside what they are actually paying, with a ⚡ marker.

End a boost early

Click End boost early on the banner and confirm.

Prizes already found keep their boosted amounts. Those customers bought while the boost was on and won fairly, and nothing is taken back from them. Ending the boost only means that tickets bought from that moment on pay the normal amount.

The banner clears, customers on the competition page see the boost disappear without reloading, and the prizes become available to boost again.

A boost also ends on its own when the countdown runs out. There is nothing to do.

Name your boost

Your site has one boost name, blurb and icon, used every time a boost runs. It defaults to Boost with a ⚡, and you can change it to whatever suits your site — The Hunt, Power Hour, whatever your customers will recognise.

To change it, open the boost panel and click Edit the site-wide boost name and blurb, or open a boost's branding from the same place.

An individual boost can override the name, blurb and icon for one competition. Use it for a themed comp — a "Feeding Frenzy" on a fishing competition — and leave the rest on your site-wide name.

"Jackpot" is not available

The word jackpot is reserved for the separate Jackpot feature and is refused in boost names and blurbs. Two different prize mechanics sharing that word would confuse your customers about which one they are looking at.

What customers see

While a boost is running, on the competition page:

• A banner near the top: your icon, "{name} is on", your blurb, a live countdown, and the headline prize written as "the £5,000 pays £7,500".
• In the instant win prize list, every boosted prize shows its normal value struck through beside the boosted value, with a BOOSTED chip. If you boosted only some of a group — four of the ten £100 finds — the chip says so.

And on the reveal:

• A customer who wins nothing sees a boost card under "Better luck next time", telling them what the big find is paying right now and how long is left.
• A customer who wins sees their boosted amount.

And on the order they have just paid for:

• Winning ticket numbers are marked with a ⚡ instead of the usual sparkle, and hovering one reads "£25.00 Site Credit — boosted to £50.00". The prize keeps the name you gave it, which is the value it was worth before, so the order says what actually landed in their wallet alongside it.
• Their wallet history shows the win as two lines: the prize's own value, then the uplift on top, named after the boost. The two add up to what they were paid.

All of it appears and disappears live. A customer sitting on the page when the boost starts or ends sees it change without reloading.

Things to know

One boost per competition at a time. A competition can only have one boost running or scheduled for any given moment. If you try to start one whose window overlaps another, you are told which one and until when. Back-to-back is fine: a boost ending at 9pm and another starting at 9pm is a hand-off, not an overlap.

The reason is what customers see. The banner has one name, one blurb and one countdown, so a second boost running at the same time would have nowhere to appear — its prizes would show their normal value on the prize list while quietly paying more. Rather than let that happen quietly, the second boost is refused.

You cannot change a boosted prize's value. While a prize is in a running or scheduled boost, its value field is locked and the reason is shown. The boost recorded what the prize is worth and what it will pay when you started it, so changing the underlying value would leave the boost describing a prize that no longer exists. End the boost first. Descriptions and images can still be edited.

Scheduled boosts are not announced. A boost you schedule for 7pm is invisible to customers until 7pm. That is deliberate: telling people "the boost starts at 7pm" tells them to stop buying until 7pm.

Odds do not change. A boost changes what a prize pays, never how likely it is to be found. Nothing about your published odds changes.

Refunds work the same as any other instant win. Cancelling or refunding an order removes the win and puts the prize back in the pool. It does not pull the money back out of the customer's wallet — that has always been true of instant wins, and a boost simply makes the amount bigger. Check the customer's wallet if you refund a boosted win.

Your books show the split. A boosted win is recorded as two entries in the customer's wallet: the prize's normal value, and the extra under the boost's name. So you can always answer "what did The Hunt actually cost me".