Your trusted lottery source since 2002

What Is A Lottery Syndicate? And How Do They Work?

Lottery syndicates give you a better chance of winning the lottery. And the fact is they create more lottery winners too.

So what is a lottery syndicate? The dictionary defines it like this:

Boring! Now this is more like it:

A group of enlightened lottery players who know the huge benefit of swapping a share of the winnings for massively better chances of actually winning.

A syndicate is therefore a bunch of people who pool their lottery money together. That's why they are also called 'lottery pools' (or sometimes lottery groups). The syndicate manager buys as many tickets as possible from the money collected. The winnings are then shared equally between the group.

You get an instant increase in your chances of winning - because you are now playing with more tickets than you would ever buy on your own. And at no extra cost.

The downside is having to share the winnings. But when even a smaller share of a jackpot win can change your life, it's not much of a downside!

But most importantly, syndicates are the only way to significantly increase your chances of winning the lottery - without buying large numbers of tickets using your own money.

What's An Office Lottery Pool Then?

The office pool is the most common form of syndicate there is. We are all familiar with a group of work colleagues playing the lottery together - also often known as 'the escape plan' ;-). Well this is a syndicate.

There is usually one person in charge of the group (the syndicate manager). Then everybody puts in a small amount of money each week, which the manager uses to buy lottery tickets. Any winnings are shared between the pool.

The thrill shared by a group of work mates all quitting their jobs together, makes many an office manager quietly nervous the world over!

Office pools do win - regularly too. Just take a look at some of these lottery syndicate winners stories, or check your local lottery companies website.

But there are some drawbacks to these smaller groups. They rely totally on a keen, ideally obsessive, individual to keep them running. There is a lot of admin involved, and not much thanks. Until you win of course!

It must be someone responsible and very organised. They are in charge of collecting the funds, buying tickets, and checking results. As well as claiming winnings and distributing those too. It's a lot of work, that should not be underestimated.

If you fancy having a go here's some tips on how to set up a lottery syndicate.

So what do you do if there isn't an office pool? Or the organiser isn't someone you'd trust to hand out jackpot millions (because that is what we're talking about here)? Well, that's where the online syndicates come in.

Online Lottery Syndicates

Many people simply don't have access to a syndicate at work, prefer a different lottery game or method of playing. So many people prefer online syndicates even though they are run by people they have never met. Obviously you need to trust the manager of an online syndicate just as you would the manager of an office pool.

Online syndicates vary greatly. There are those run by enthusiatic individuals who do it just because they want a better chance of winning. Right through to professional companies with staff and offices. Both certainly have their good points. And both can be equally good or bad depending how well they are designed and run.

Q. Why Should I Join One?
A. Winning The Jackpot!

The odds of winning the jackpot are big, really big (like space..).

Playing just one ticket every draw your entire life, the most likely result is you would never win the jackpot - ever.

But if you're like me, you want something better than those odds!

And You Can Do Better!

You can improve your chances of winning the lottery by changing the way you play, and the fastest most effective way to instantly boost your chances of winning the jackpot - is to play in a syndicate group.

Take your average 6 balls from 49 lottery.

That's nearly a 1 in 14 million chance of winning the lottery jackpot, if you only buy one ticket.

It's simple maths to see that if you buy 10 tickets, your chances are 10 times better. Those odds tumble, but are still way over a 1 in a million shot.

But keep going - with 50 tickets you're now talking about 1 in 280,000. Can you see that's now starting to get believable?

What about 1000 tickets? That's only 1 in a 14,000. For the jackpot.

Watch Out For The Downside

But wait a minute here. Don't forget there can be a downside.

The problem here is the other 999 people. They all want their share too. Win 10 million and we only get 10 thousand each. Nice, but we won't be retiring on that.

So the key here is balance.

You want enough tickets to give a good chance of a win, but few enough players that winning the lottery jackpot gives you a major life changing chunk of cash.

And all at a cost that you can still afford to lose!

That's what we look for in a good syndicate.

If you want to shortcut the work to find the best ones to play in, check out our reviews here of the best national lottery syndicates. These have done the figures properly and got the balance right for most types of player.

Choosing The Best Syndicate?

A professional company should be more trustworthy - they will have staff and offices, lots of easy payment options, and probably a phone number you can call them on. But this level of service will of course cost more.

You can get great service from amateur syndicates too, but just remember they will only be running the group in their spare time so don't expect too much. And try to be gentle if they need a holiday or get sick.

One of the more common problems with amateur syndicates however is losing interest. Without any income to pay for staff, those one-man-band groups often lose motivation or close down pretty quickly when they realise the amount of work involved.

You will pay more for a professional business to run your group of course. But the peace of mind that your entries are being controlled by a dedicated company can be a very small price to pay when those numbers come up!

If you're still not sure, read our longer guide on how to choose a syndicate.

Which you choose however will ultimately depend on many other factors about the syndicate too. Which is why we review all aspects of syndicates and not just how big they are.