How the sweepstake draw works: pots, seeds and the live reveal

What makes it fair

A straight random draw can hand one person the three favourites and another person three no-hopers. SweepSquad avoids that with pots.

1. Competitors are sorted by seed, favourite first.
2. They're split into pots, each the same size as your number of members. With 10 members, pot 1 is the 10 favourites, pot 2 the next 10, and so on.
3. Every member gets one competitor from each full pot, at random.
4. If the last pot is smaller than the number of members, only some members get one from it — chosen at random.

So with 10 members and 32 teams, everyone gets three teams (one from each of the first three pots) and two lucky people get a fourth from the last pot of two. The pots even out the odds; luck decides who gets what within them.

You need at least as many competitors as members. If some competitors are already out of the real event, they're left out of the draw unless you tick Include … already out (for example, Include Teams already out).

Instant draw

Press Allocate on the Draw tab (Allocate Teams, Allocate Players and so on) and it's done. Joining closes at the same moment.

An instant draw doesn't email anyone by itself. When you're ready, press Email … to all (Email Teams to all, for example) to send everyone their competitors, or Send next to individual members.

Use Revoke to clear the draw completely. You can then run a fresh draw.

Scheduled draw — the one to use if you can

Scheduling turns the draw into a moment: everyone gets a link, watches a countdown, and sees the reveal together.

1. Open the Share tab and switch on Live page link. The draw link won't work without it.
2. On the Draw tab, pick a date and time and press Schedule draw.
3. Each member is emailed a personal invitation to watch (it doesn't give away their competitors). The order is locked at this point, so it can't be changed behind anyone's back.
4. Before the time, the draw page shows a countdown, who's in the draw and the pots.
5. At the time, the reveal plays out pot by pot.
6. Shortly afterwards the draw completes and everyone is emailed their competitors. If you don't want to wait, press Mark complete.

Use Copy draw link to drop it into Slack, Teams or a meeting invite. It's a great one to put on the big screen.

Starting again

Reopen (reshuffle) throws the current order away and lets you draw again. Think twice once people have seen what they've got — the app will tell you how many invitations have already gone out.