Syndicates win the lottery all the freakin time.
But there are good reasons why – starting with just what we really mean by a ‘syndicate’.
Let’s get into it.
What Is a Lottery Syndicate?
The simple definition is that a syndicate is a group of people playing the lottery together.
But your idea of what that really means may differ from mine.
A syndicate can be as simple as just 2 friends sharing the cost of one single ticket. Or it can be a closed group of ‘investors’ managed by a genius organizer who knows just when the optimum time to play is…
The most common types of syndicate though are the office lottery pool and the commercial online syndicate company.
The office lottery pool is what most people are familiar with. Somebody in the office decides it would be fun to start an ‘escape plan’ that involves half the office winning Powerball and quitting their jobs. Typically everyone funds one ticket each and the group split the winnings equally. The size of these groups is usually in the 10-30 people range. Bigger than that and it just becomes a nightmare for one person to manage.
The commercial online lottery syndicate is run by a company ‘for profit’ (nothing wrong with that of course – that’s what all companies do). The service they provide for players is to manage everything: the people, the money (and chasing it up), the ticket buying, checking results, claiming prizes and distributing winnings. Normally these companies offer entries in various different games, and have multiple groups all playing different sets of numbers. It’s only the economies of scale that come from managing thousands of players that make it possible (or practical) for any reasonable cost. The actual syndicate group sizes tend to be larger because the efficiency of a company running it allows for that. So groups are often 50+ members and even into the hundreds with some companies.
Of course you have to watch out for those charging a reasonable cost for all this versus those charging ridiculous markups (typically the ones making it difficult to see how many entries you get or how many people are in a group). You have been warned. 🙂
So How Many Lottery Syndicates Are There?
There are a huge number of syndicates playing the lottery all over the world every single week.
The actual number of syndicates is totally unknown because there is no requirement in any country for them to be registered.
Some countries have stricter requirements around commercial companies running syndicates, but no country has a register of syndicates.
Not even the lottery companies know how many syndicates are playing their games. When a ticket is bought there is nothing to indicate whether it has been bought by one person or a syndicate group.
Take just the USA for example. About half of all Americans play the lottery – that’s about 100 million adults. Even if we say just 0.1% (i.e. one tenth of one percent) of those play in a syndicate that would still be 100,000 people. With an average group size of 10 that would be 10,000 syndicates. Just for the USA!
Further, there are 91 different countries and territories that have a national lottery (see how many countries have a lottery). Not all are as big as the USA and not all play as much as the USA. But there are also multi-country games like EuroMillions and countries that have multiple smaller regional games.
Even if we say 10 times as many syndicates for the rest of the world, which seems very conservative, that gets us up to 100,000+ syndicates worldwide.
How Often Do Syndicates Win?
With an estimated 100,000+ syndicates around the world. All playing multiple entries (10, 50, 100+) and most playing every single draw, it’s pretty clear that syndicates win some lower tier prizes every single draw.
Just on those numbers alone, it’s therefore also fairly likely that a syndicate somewhere wins a jackpot prize most weeks of the year.
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