Independent site. CasinoCalcs is not affiliated with or endorsed by any lottery operator, including the National Lottery, Allwyn and Ireland’s National Lottery. Game names are used only to describe the rules the maths is based on.
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
A 50/50 draw is the simplest fundraiser there is: everyone buys tickets, the money goes in one pot, one ticket is drawn and the winner takes half. The other half stays with the club or charity. Sell 2,000 tickets at £2 and the pot is £4,000, the winner walks off with £2,000 and the cause keeps the same. The free CasinoCalcs 50/50 draw calculator above does that sum for any draw and adds what organisers forget to tell you: your real chance with the tickets in your hand.
50/50 draw odds and what a ticket is worth
Your chance is your tickets divided by all the tickets sold, nothing more. Five tickets out of 2,000 is 1 in 400. If you paid £10 for those five, they’re worth 5/2,000 × £2,000 = £5 on average, half what you paid. That holds for every 50/50 draw, whatever the size: a ticket is worth half its price on average, because half the pot never comes back to the players.
Big stadium draws in Canada and hockey or football club draws in the UK can reach six-figure pots. The prize grows, but so does the number of tickets, so your chance per pound stays almost exactly the same. Bundles are the exception: “5 for £10, 20 for £20” deals give heavy buyers more tickets per pound, which nudges their share up and everyone else’s down.
Running a 50/50 draw
The splits aren’t always 50/50. Some draws pay the winner 40% and keep 60%, and big ones sometimes split the prize half between a main winner and a few smaller prizes. Change the share under “More options” to match yours. Whatever the split, publish it before tickets go on sale and say when and how the draw happens.
For draws with several prizes, the raffle odds calculator handles the maths, and the raffle ticket price calculator helps set a price that hits your target. A long-running alternative is chase the ace, where the jackpot keeps growing until someone finds the ace of spades.