Earlier in 2023 a new property prize draw platform launched called Win My Home. To kick start their aims at establishing themselves in a difficult sector they offered entrants the chance to win a £2million villa in Nottingham owned by local businessman, Elliot Andrew. To enter the draw you needed to purchase tickets that started at just £10. In fact the platform offered entrants the chance to purchase different bundles including 15 tickets for £10, 40 for £25, 85 for £50, 320 for £150 and 1000 for £350. Win My Home closed their prize draw at the end of July but unlike the Omaze model, if insufficient tickets were sold then the winner would be offered a cash prize. On 14th August 2023 a video was posted on to social media showing when the winner – Loreta from Nottingham – was surprised by Win My Home with news of her win. Interestingly there’s been no indication of whether Loreta picked up a cash prize or the keys to the £2million home but all the evidence pointed to the former. After all if you’ve created a £2million home winner there’s usually a tendancy to dine out on fact in order to build up interest for further prize draws. However, Loreta’s joy has rapidly changed to disappointment when it was revealed that her prize was just £5000!
Nearly 400,000 Tickets!
According to information posted about the prize draw by visitors to our review page, Win My Home drew the winner’s name from 398,047 tickets. Now this number doesn’t actually represent 398,047 x £10 tickets. If you remember from above tickets were sold in bundles so by making an assumption that every entrant purchased 15 tickets then the most about of revenue that could have been generated is 26,536 x £10 = £265,364. In reality this amount will be lower because some entrants would have opted to purchase more tickets plus the platform gave away tickets in a prize draw. One big issue we raised about Win My Home was that if they had to award a cash prize then the amount would be 50% of Net Profits. This is a lot less when compared to Raffall who for example offer 70% of ticket sales. So does this mean the winner should have received around £130,000 as they didn’t get the house? Well no because the percentage applies to net profits rather than gross sales. This means that Win My Home were free to spend what they like on marketing, admin and other expenses and then whatever is left after that then gets split between themselves (profit) and the winner. That kind of approach is fine provided the winner comes out of it with something worthwhile but according to The Nottingham Post that’s most certainly not the case.
Where Did The Cash Go?
According to the above article, Win My Home actually made the £5000 payment from their own pockets because the prize draw actually ended up making a loss. They claim that they had “nearly £200,000 in marketing costs” and at some point also had some issues with payment facilities. Those marketing costs include adverts on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) as well as a flyer campaign in the local area. We’d also suggest that some cash was spent on buying followers on social platforms because as we stated in our review the numbers were well over inflated. Naturally the winners are disappointed and who can actually blame them! £5000 actually represents less than 2% of the estimated ticket sales. This means that for every £10 a customer spent in the hope to win a £2million house only 20p actually went into the prize pot. To add further context to this Froghopping who – as far as we understand – didn’t spend any money on social media marketing and messed entrants around with their ticket prices still managed to award £4400 to their first winner in their New Haven Home prize draw. Whilst the terms and conditions of the prize draw were clear to all entrants what actually sucks more than the £5000 is that in The Nottingham Post article Win My Home suggest it was actually “a goodwill gesture”. Wow! That was nice of them!
Surely They Knew?
On 10th July 2023, Win My House posed the big question “have we sold enough tickets”? Their answer was glib as they didn’t want to decrease entrants chances of winning but they did indicate that “the average spend per person has been far higher than expected and therefore the total tickets required decreased hugely to around 125K”. Well given then they had made no money on ticket sales to the closure of the draw, 125K sales still wouldn’t have covered the valution of the prize. So we can summise that Win My Home surely knew on 10th July 2023 that they were no where near selling enough tickets, that they weren’t covering their costs and that the winner was going to be incredibly lucky to win a cash prize and wouldn’t have won anything except for their goodwill gesture. Yet they still encouraged people to buy under the pretence that they could win a £2million house. In fact their Facebook posts on the 14th and 21st July clearly indicated “You Could Win This £2million Villa In Nottingham” and nothing about a cash alternative. Comments on The Nottingham Post’s Facebook page are as expected with many using the word scam and sharing in the winner’s disappointment.
Will There Be Another Draw?
Win My Home have made several indications that they aim to do this all over again. At the end of July they posted that they “have been contacted by many property developers and agents about our next home but where would YOU like our next prize draw to be?”. They also told The Nottingham Post that “there’s a great chance that the next draw will be a huge success”. We love optimism but can’t share it in this instance. For subsequent draws to be successful you still need to get ticket sales through marketing and from your loyal audience. Win My Home have already demonstrated that spending £200,000 hasn’t created a £2million winner so they may need more funds as well as a better marketing strategy if they’re serious about being involved in this sector. Additionally those people who paid money in good faith will not look so kindly on a business that spent a load of cash only to create a £5000 winner as a goodwill gesture. It’ll be interesting to see if indeed the platform returns with the same property or a new property and/or whether property developers and agents would use it knowing that it was so far off from it’s goal of creating a £2million property winner in Nottingham.