The Health Lottery: Rules, Price & Odds

How to Play The Health Lottery

When compared to the rest of the available lottery programmes in the UK, The Health Lottery is a very new initiative. Starting in 2011, it has raised over £125 for good causes! The Health Lottery is currently operating on behalf of 3 society lotteries and 3 Community Interest Companies (CICs). The lottery is currently working in 12 regions across Britain!

As lottery tickets are deemed a form of gambling, it requires regulation from the government. In the case of the UK, the Gambling Commission is the designated authority. So, you know that the money you’re spending on the tickets is going where it’s supposed to go.

Playing the Health Lottery is a very straightforward process. If you have previous experience playing any of the games offered on the National Lottery website, you may already know what to do. Each ticket is a "play" or a "line" that you buy by selecting five numbers from a pool of 50 numbers, 1 through 50. The draws are held every two and a half minutes, utilising the QuickWin feature of the game.

You can buy up to 8 lines in one instance when you buy the tickets. At the same time, you can select how many draws you want to opt for. You can choose multiple draws for the same week or opt for all draws for the upcoming five weeks!

When selecting the numbers, you can pick them manually or use the QuickWin feature to give you the best odds. However, it doesn’t matter very much because the likelihood of drawing all of the numbers is the same.

Along with the main lottery you participate in for real money, you also get a free lottery draw worth £100,000. To be precise, it happens on the same days as the main draw, Wednesdays and Saturdays. To ensure that every number has an equal chance of coming up, an RNG (Random Number Generator) is used. It’s also verified by a 3rd party auditor approved by none other than the UK Gambling Commission.

Rules of The Health Lottery

As the audience is very broad for The Health Lottery, the lottery rules must be followed along the way. To help you out in this regard, the website offers all the information you need to know before opting for the game.

Odds to Win the Prizes

• The odds are going to be different across the prize list. Most of the lotteries operate in the UK, except for the People’s Postcode Lottery.

• The odds of winning the Mega Prize, which you get when you match all five numbers, are1 2,118,644! The odds of winning a share of the £100,000 free prize draw is also 1 in 2.1 million.

• The next prize is when you match 4 balls and the bonus ball. The odds of this happening is 1 in 423,752.

• Then, you can match only four numbers to win the next prize. The odds for this one are 1 in 9,631.

• The next prize is when you match 3 numbers and the bonus ball, you get odds of 1 in 4,815.

• You get the next prize when you only match the three numbers, and you get the odds of 1 in 224.

• The following prizes follow the same pattern, and you get favourable odds for all of them. The odds are 1 in 224, 1 in 16, and 1 in 32.

• The overall odds that indicate you might win any prizes is 1 in 6.

Price of The Health Lottery Ticket

If you’re familiar with the National UK Lottery, you may know that the Thunderball game is the cheapest lottery in the country! But if we go by that logic, The Health Lottery is also the most affordable because the ticket prices start at £1 only! Unfortunately, you can’t buy tickets at the UK online casinos.

£1 is the price for 1 line. When you buy the tickets, you can go for up to 8 lines at once. So, for a single draw, you can spend up to £8. Similarly, if you go for two draws, it’ll be two tickets, and the price will double.

If you consider the five draws during the week, up to 5 weeks of an advance play, and up to 8 lines for each draw, you can spend up to a whopping £200 on tickets every month! The more tickets you buy, the more you improve your odds of winning.

The Health Lottery Jackpot

We know you’re hoping for the jackpot whenever you buy a lottery ticket. Otherwise, why would you bother, right? Thankfully, The Health Lottery in the UK does offer a "jackpot" in the disguise of the top prize. Fortunately, it’s an "estimated jackpot", so the prize value can change according to ticket sales. You win the jackpot if you match all five numbers from the draw, and you can win a whopping £25,000 for it!

Now, the amount may not look very appealing at first glance, but it all makes sense if you consider the number of draws that happen each week. Also, £25,000 is just the baseline prize. So, you can always win more if you’re lucky. You always participate in more than one draw and increase your chances of winning.

The 2nd prize from The Health Lottery is £10,000. The 3rd prize drops quite a bit when compared to the first 2. It was only £250. The rest of the prizes follow the same pattern, gradually decreasing in value. They are £50, £20, £10, £3, £1.50, and a free ticket.

Biggest Win Made

As you know, the top prize in the Lottery starts from £25,000. Although the information on the £1 lottery winners is somewhat limited, there have been many instances of £250,000 wins in the Mega Raffle program of The Health Lottery.

Results of The Health Lottery

One of the most exciting things to do when you buy a lottery ticket is to check whether you’ve won or not! While the big-name lotteries in the US have live streams of the draws, and even the National Lottery hosts live draws on the YouTube channel, your option for The Health Lottery is only to check the website.

On the bright side, you can input the number on your ticket directly on the website to check whether you’ve won or not. The website also includes the winning numbers for 8 of the previous draws. The page constantly updates; this is the best channel to check out the result.

How to Claim The Health Lottery Prizes

If you’re lucky enough to win a prize from The Health Lottery in the UK, you’ll need to claim it from the authority manually. The process is going to vary a little for online and retail players. If you’re an online player and paid for the tickets directly from your bank account, winnings up to £2,000 will be paid directly into the same account. It might take up to 14 days for the money to reach your account, but you can rest assured that it’s a streamlined process.

For winnings over £2,000 online, you’ll need to call The Health Lottery at 0844 375 55 55 to get additional instructions. The process of withdrawal will vary based on where you live in the UK.

As for retail players, the players who bought their Play cards from a retailer can claim prizes up to £50 directly from the retailer. Any of the 32,000 would work! For prizes up to £250, you can claim it from your nearest post office. And when it comes to prizes valued at over £250, you need to call The Health Lottery using the same number.

Keep in mind that the telephone lines are not toll-free. You’ll be charged 7p for every minute you talk on the phone, along with the charges for the telephone providers.

Taxes of These Prizes

Lottery wins are the best in the UK. Do you know why? Because there are no taxes on the winnings. Only the winnings you collect following the annuity model will be subject to taxes. But the nature of The Health Lottery doesn’t allow for the Annuity model. So, there’s no tax for you.

Whatever the amount you win, it’s yours to keep.

Our Opinion on The Health Lottery

The Health Lottery may not have the best jackpot prize globally, but it has one of the most player-friendly lotteries. The top prize still has long odds, but the other prizes are relatively easy to win. Since its inception in 2011, there have been over 17 million winners!

If you’re looking for a way to contribute to the UK's healthcare industry and a chance to win a prize, there’s no better option than The Health Lottery, in our opinion.

The Health Lottery FAQs

Let’s finish up the discussion by listing some of the most commonly asked questions by the lottery participants.