With many key sporting events like soccer world cup, the rugby world cup, the cricket world cup to the regional championships like the European championship and Copa , the office sweepstake becomes a great way to participate in the fun of these tournaments with fellow work colleagues. With different amounts of cash prizes on offer to those who end up with the winning sweepstake tickets.
How does a sweepstake work? A sweepstake is essentially a lottery and they work by the participants randomly drawing a ticket and paying a fee for the privilege of entry. The cost of the ticket is used towards the total prize fund. With the tickets for the winning team, the runner up and sometimes the worst performing team winning a prize.
Normally you would download a sweepstake kit, cut out the squares with the teams involved and put these into a bag where they would then be randomly selected. Each person picks out the square which is folded so they can’t see what the name of the team is.
At the same time they also put money into a kitty, for the privilege of being able to select a team. One person usually tracks who has picked what team and whether they have paid and then it becomes their job to track down non-payers and make sure payment is made before the world cup starts.
World cup sweepstakes are generally office sweepstakes, but clubs and societies do also run them. Making it possible for someone to end up in not just one sweepstake, but multiple sweepstakes, from their workplace to one at bar and one at the tennis club for example.
With a world cup sweepstake, the selection process is different to how to you would play a sweepstake involving horse racing or greyhound racing for that matter.
To make it more entertaining, not only is there a prize for those holding the sweepstake ticket for the outright world cup winner and the ticket for the runner up, there can also be a booby prize for the person holding the ticket of the worst performing team or many other different consolation prize options.
How do I do an office sweepstake?
To do an office sweepstake, you first need an event like the soccer world cup for example. You write down the teams playing in the world cup alphabetically and then number the teams with a unique number. By cutting out the teams and then folding in half with the blank side showing, participants can then pick the tickets from a bag.
Teams can be written out as follows in alphabetical order:
- Argentina
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Colombia
- Denmark
- England
- France
- Germany
With the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, there will be 32 teams playing then using a book of cloakroom tickets, or simpler still, splitting a sheet of paper into 32 boxes and writing a number in each, then cutting each number out. Allows you to create tickets for the sweepstake participants to draw from.
By folding these tickets in half, blank side out, protects anyone from seeing the names on the teams until they have drawn one of the tickets and opened the fold to reveal the team name. The next step is to put the team names into a hat and then get the participants to draw a team from the hat.
| 1 | Argentina | Bob M. |
| 2 | Belgium | Mary C. |
| 3 | Brazil | Jin K. |
| 4 | Colombia | Jinder S. |
| 5 | Denmark | Logan J. |
| 6 | England | Will S. |
| 7 | France | Chris H. |
| 8 | Germany | Magda E. |
As each team is drawn, it’s important to remember who has drawn which team and putting the name of the person next to the team they have drawn on the original team sheet is probably the best way of doing this, as shown in the table above.
How much should a sweepstake ticket cost?
The cost of a sweepstake ticket needs to be attractive enough to garner interest and also sufficient to make a decent prize pool. If the sweepstake ticket costs too much, then the risk of not getting enough people to participate in the sweepstake becomes very real.
Having tickets costing five dollars or pounds or euros might not make the world cup sweepstake attractive and selling enough tickets won’t be achievable as work colleagues might think of this as being an excessive amount to pay for a ticket, making it difficult to find enough people to participate.
The ticket price needs to be attractive, as you may have people who don’t really follow football (soccer) so for them it’s a bit of fun and socializing with work colleagues. So, a dollar, a pound, a euro, for entry is attractive compared to five dollars, five pounds, to five euros, more so if you don’t have enough participants and have to sell two tickets to each participant, leading to a cost of ten dollars (ten pounds or ten euros) for each participant. This could become off-putting.
It is important to consider there may be competition from other workplace sweepstakes as events like the world cup in Qatar in 2022 are traditionally important and tend to bridge across those who follow soccer and those who don’t. When I did my first office sweepstake, we had a lot of participants who knew diddly squat about soccer, but they were only too happy to participate, as it is a great team building event in itself.
There are a number of important other factors to consider too:
- Can the person running the sweepstake be trusted to keep the money?
- Do people pay up at the end or when they pick their ticket?
- Will enough people be available?
- What about remote workers?
The first point is important as having someone abscond or more probable lose the prize fund is going to be a big issue. I normally get my work colleagues to elect a trustee to manage all the funds and this trustee keep the funds in a locked box in their desk drawer, which is also locked.
So, as the organizer, I am impartial to the funds and I could push the job of making sure the funds are paid up to the trustee, but I do that myself. However, if you do decide to make the trustee responsible for collecting the ticket money, then it’s important to make sure they are aware of this or if they don’t want to do this, then it’s not really a big deal for the organizer to do this.
Payment for tickets must be made before the event starts, getting people to pay for tickets after the world cup in Qatar has finished, is like a kick in the teeth if they’ve not won anything. More importantly, will the colleagues be still working there when the world cup is over, and with world cups taking over a month, people could easily change jobs in that time.
Will people be on holiday preceding the world cup is also something that needs to be considered as this may make it difficult to make the numbers for a world cup sweepstake.
Do some people work remotely (but are based at the same site as you), how will they draw their ticket? Normally this will be done by proxy where a colleague who is based on site will draw the ticket on their behalf.
How do you split sweepstakes winnings?
Sweepstake winnings can be split in a number of ways, with the easiest way to split winnings by giving the whole prize fund to the ticket holder who has the winning team for the Qatar world cup. So, if each ticket has been sold for $5 and with 32 teams participating in the world cup, the prize to the winning ticket will be $160.
This might cause some resentment amongst colleagues and when I organize sweepstakes, I tend to have multiple prizes with a lower main prize for the person who has the ticket with the winning team. I also more importantly have a lower ticket price of a single dollar (one pound or one euro, making it more attractive.
With a single dollar and with different winning combinations, the sweepstake winnings could be split as follows:
- $20 winner
- $10 runner up
- $2 worst performing team
The worst performing team could be the team with lowest points score so taking the world cup in Russia in 2018 as an example, the teams with the lowest points were Egypt and Panama. However, Panama conceded eleven goals, five more goals than Egypt’s six, so Panama would have been the worst performing team based on goal difference. Anyone in the sweepstake holding a ticket associated with Panama would have won the worst performing team prize.
If the teams still can’t be separated by goal difference then the next indicator to look for would be the goals scored, so if two teams had a goal difference of minus five (-5) each but one team had scored one goal less than the others, then this team would be the prime candidate for the worst performing team.
In the unlikely event, there is no difference in the team goal difference or goals scored to separate them, then the booby prize can be shared by those participants with the matching team tickets, so the $2 is shared equally as a dollar each if there were two ticket holders with the worst performing teams.
A better way to split the sweepstake winnings could be the following:
- $16 Winning team
- $8 Runner up team
- $2 Worst performing team
- $2 Option 1
- $2 Option 2
- $2 Option 3
Maybe instead of the worst performing team, one of the following options could be included (I’ve included in brackets which team would have been relevant if the results were based on the world cup in Russia in 2018):
- Team with most goals scored in a single match [Belgium]
- Team with goal scored from the longest distance [Argentina – Di Maria[2]]
- Team who picked up the most cards [Colombia & Switzerland[3]]
- Team who picked up the least cards [Saudi Arabia[3]]
- Team with Golden boot winner [England]
- Team who scored the most goals [Belgium]
- Team who conceded the most goals [Panama]
- Team with most clean sheets [France]
- Team with first red card [Colombia[3] – Carlos Sanchez]
The choice of options also allows a single ticket holder to win multiple prizes, with a ticket holder picking France in the world cup in Russia in 2018, would have at least two opportunities to win, as the Winning team and the team with the most clean sheets, if this option was one of the options.
Likewise, tickets holders for Belgium and Colombia, could also be in line for two prizes, with Belgium as the team who scored the most goals in a single match and most goals overall. Whilst Colombia, as the team with the most cards and the team with the first red card.
Now assuming the cost of each ticket is two (2) dollars and there will be thirty-two workplace colleagues taking part in the world cup sweepstake, this would lead to a prize fund of sixty four (64) dollars. Prizes could be split as following:
- $40 Winning team
- $20 Runner up team
- $4 Worst performing team
It may be more prudent to include more prizes to attract more participants as psychologically believing there is a good chance of winning may make it easier to sell tickets:
- $32 Winning team
- $16 Runner up team
- $4 Worst performing team
- $4 Team with most goals scored in a single match
- $4 Team with Golden boot winner
- $4 Team who picked up the most cards
Now assuming the cost of the ticket is five (5) dollars and there will be thirty-two workplace colleagues taking part, leading to a prize fund of sixty four (160) dollars. With prizes split as following:
- $100 Winning team
- $50 Runner up team
- $10 Worst performing team
A better option could be the following prize fund breakdown:
- $80 Winning team
- $40 Runner up team
- $10 Worst performing team
- $10 Team with most goals scored in a single match
- $10 Team with Golden boot winner
- $10 Team who picked up the most cards
Based on the results of the world cup in Russia in 2018, the winning teams would be for the straightforward option of $5 a ticket:
- $100 France
- $50 Croatia
- $10 Panama
For the option of more prizes, the winning tickets for the following teams would win prizes:
- $80 France
- $40 Croatia
- $10 Panama
- $10 Belgium (Team who scored the most goals in a single match)
- $10 England (Team with Golden boot winner – Harry Kane)
- $10 Columbia and Switzerland (Team who picked up the most cards with this prize being shared as $5 each as there are two teams qualifying)
My personal preference is to go for a dollar (pound or euro) and opt for more prizes, thereby splitting the sweepstake prize fund across many winners. This makes it more enjoyable for people to enter and doesn’t cause any resentment where a single prize would.
How do you know if a sweepstakes is legit?
In many countries’ sweepstakes could be classed as lotteries and if the country has strong lottery legislation, then there could be penalties and fines for running an authorized lottery. The United States has very strong laws on running sweepstakes including no purchase necessary laws. I strongly advice checking with state and federal laws if you are planning on running a sweepstake in the United States first to make sure you’re not doing anything illegal.
In the United Kingdom under the Gambling Act 2005[1] any games involving chance are classed as a lottery and therefore subject to requiring a license. This act views a lottery as a game where who wins a prize amongst those who have paid to enter, is determined by chance and not using skill.
This UK license in itself isn’t easy to acquire, meaning only a handful of organizations are able to run lotteries and generally these are charities and local authorities, with the exception of the national lottery provider, which at the time of writing this article is Camelot.
Sweepstakes are in essence just raffles, which would mean there is not real skill involved in picking a winner, it’s all based on a lottery. However, there is an exemption to the gambling act in the UK where workplace raffles are permitted, so running an office sweepstake for the Qatar World Cup in 2022 would fall under this exemption. So, as long as the sweepstake is run and entered into only by employees of the same organization, at the same site then the sweepstake stays on the right side of the gambling act.
Promoting the office sweepstake, the UK gambling act permits advertising within the same site only, even if there are multiple buildings within the same site but not across multiple sites. Working for a large organization with multiples sites, for example an office in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh, with each site having multiple building.
Having a sweepstake with employees entering from different sites would fall foul of the UK gambling act. But having a sweepstake, let’s say at the Birmingham site where there are ten different buildings would not fall foul of the act if employees from the ten different buildings entered the sweepstake, as long as they were all based at the Birmingham site.
It is highly recommended to check where you plan to run your office sweepstake as to its legality to make sure you are not doing something illegal.
Charity World Cup Sweepstakes
From April 2016, it became permissible in the UK to raise funds for charity when undertaking a sweepstake in the UK. Prior to this, the gambling acts scope would mean all monies collected would need to be paid as prizes and were not be used for charity donations.
I don’t think running a world cup office sweepstake would fall into these requirements, as the exemption for ‘incidental non-commercial lotteries’ is strict in ensuring:
- All the tickets for the sweepstake must be sold where the event is taking place
- Tickets are sold with the results announced while the event is taking place
These two restrictions make it difficult to use an office sweepstake for charity, as the office sweepstake is taking place far away from the world cup. With the results announced after the world cup has finished. These are my interpretations of the law around this and I suggest seeking out qualified legal guidance if you are intending on running a charitable sweepstake.
[1] https://www.kemplittle.com/blog/healthy-competition-your-legal-how-to-guide-for-the-sporting-summer/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup#Statistics
[3] ttps://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/russia2018/statistics/teams/disciplinary
