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Instant Wins and Already Sold Tickets

Why Instant Wins added after sales have started skip tickets that are already sold, and how to set them up so every ticket has a fair chance to win.

The short answer: set up all your Instant Wins before you open a competition for sales. When you add Instant Wins, the system only picks winning numbers from tickets that have not yet been sold, so any prize you add after sales begin can never land on a ticket someone has already bought.

This page explains why that happens and how to avoid catching your early buyers out.

How winning numbers are chosen

When you create an Instant Win, the system randomly assigns its winning ticket numbers for you. It picks those numbers from the pool of tickets that are still available, which means tickets that:

  • have not already been sold to a customer, and

  • are not already used as a winning number by another Instant Win on the same competition.

It will never assign the same number twice, and it will never quietly turn a ticket someone has already paid for into a winner.

That is exactly what keeps the draw fair. The catch is that the size of this available pool depends entirely on when you set the Instant Wins up.

Why timing matters so much

Set up before launch (recommended)

If you add your Instant Wins (or increase the quantity of an existing prize) before any tickets have sold, the winning numbers can be spread across your entire ticket range. Every ticket in the competition has a genuine chance of being a winner. This is the fair approach, and the one we recommend for every competition.

Adding them after sales start excludes early buyers

If you add an Instant Win, or increase the quantity of one, after sales have already started, every ticket that has already been bought is skipped. None of those already sold tickets can win the prize you have just added.

In plain terms, the people who supported you first are silently left out of any prize you add late. They cannot win it no matter what, and if that ever comes to light it can feel unfair and lead to complaints. Avoid it by setting everything up before you go live.

Why you might see "Not enough tickets left"

Because winning numbers can only come from available (unsold, unused) tickets, there is a natural limit on how many Instant Win tickets you can create. If you ask for more than there are available numbers remaining, the builder will refuse to save and show a "Not enough tickets left" warning.

This can happen in two ways:

  1. The combined total of all the Instant Wins you are adding is more than the number of tickets left.

  2. One single prize on its own needs more tickets than remain.

In either case nothing is saved, and the message tells you how many tickets the prize needed compared with how many were actually available. Just lower the Number Available for the prize and try again.

The same prizes can become impossible to add later

As a competition sells more tickets, fewer numbers stay available. A set of Instant Wins that would have fitted comfortably at launch can become impossible to add once a chunk of the tickets have sold. This is another reason to get them in place before you open for sales.

Reading the "Available Tickets" figure

The budget bar at the top of the Instant Wins builder shows an Available Tickets figure. This is the genuine number of unsold, unused tickets you have left to work with, not the full size of the competition.

So if that number looks smaller than you expected, it is simply telling you the truth: sales (and any Instant Wins you have already created) have used up part of the range. The remainder is all that new winning numbers can be drawn from.

For more on the budget bar and the rest of the builder, see the main guide:

Add Instant Wins

The takeaway

Plan your prizes first, then launch. If you decide everything before the competition goes live, the system can spread your Instant Wins fairly across every ticket, every buyer has the same chance, and you will not run into the "Not enough tickets left" wall. Adding prizes mid way through is possible, but only the tickets still unsold can win them, so use it sparingly and be mindful of your earlier buyers.

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