How to run a tombola
Image: Colourful bunting.
Perfect prizes
The perfect tombola starts with the perfect prizes. Depending on your players, cuddly toys, chocolate boxes, sealed toiletries and bottles of alcohol help grab the interest of both children and adults. Buy these specially for the tombola, or use leftover goodies from previous events and donations from the community. If you have a lot of prizes to get through, you could put together prize bundles such as luxury hampers, or sell super cheap tickets to encourage more people to have a go!
If you’re including any alcohol as raffle prizes, check the requirements with your local authority as you may need a TEN licence.
In season
If you want to run a tombola as a standalone event, you’ll need a small society lottery licence to do so. But you don’t need any special licences to run a tombola as part of a larger event, so host one at your summer or winter fair to add some extra interest. For summer, fun outdoor games, miniature inflatables and toys make amazing prizes. For winter, warm and festive treats like chocolate boxes, Christmassy biscuits and a bottle or two of mulled wine for the adults are just the ticket.
Tickets please
Cloakroom tickets are ideal for a tombola. Make sure the drum is filled with the winning tickets and the remaining ‘losing’ tickets. Depending on how many prizes you have, we recommend one winning ticket for every four losing ones. Traditionally, winning tombola tickets are those ending in a ‘5’ or ‘0’, but you could assign specific numbered tickets to prizes instead.
Win the day
Players buy tickets to pick numbers from the tombola drum – one ticket is one draw, five is five draws, and so on. Every ticket you sell needs to be the same price. Tickets are drawn from the revolving drum to decide the winners! All the tickets need to be sold and drawn during your event, so make sure you have enough time to get through all your prizes.
To help everyone feel included, offer a small bag of sweets or something similar to players who don’t draw winning tickets.
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