Superdraws

A superdraw is a normal National Lottery draw (either Saturday or Wednesday) where the prize fund is topped up by the lottery operator to a guaranteed minimum value.

The rules say that the value of the Superdraw prize can be a maximum of the average of the four highest jackpot pools out of the last five normal draws, after rounding down to the nearest £100,000.

Originally, Superdraws used to prevail if a rollover and a Superdraw coincided. So the rollover prize money would be 'absorbed' into the total prize value of the Superdraw. However, since 8th January 2000 (the 42nd Superdraw), the rollover amount has been added to the Superdraw amount.

History

Plans of mice and men; The first ever Superdraw took place on Saturday 7th January 1995 (only the eighth National Lottery drawing) with a guaranteed jackpot of £10 million. Much to the dismay of the marketing men, the jackpot wasn't won and had to be rolled over to the ninth draw when an all-time record 133 jackpot winners shared the prize, thus depriving everyone of a Super-winner.

The first ever Wednesday draw on 5th February 1997 was also a Superdraw with an unusual amount of £9,999,999. The next three Wednesday draws were also Superdraws with jackpots of £10m, £7m and £7m respectively, designed to get the new mid-week game off to a flying start.

Statistics

Highest Superdraw Prize
Was £23,313,361 on 8th January 2000. The drawn numbers were 13-18-32-34-39-41-(2)

Lowest Superdraw Prize
Was £555,556 on 12th February 1997. The drawn numbers were 5-14-23-29-38-45-(47)

Average Superdraw Prize
Is £2,513,291 between an average of four winners.

Most Winners
The highest number of winners of a Superdraw is 32, who all selected 2-18-17-29-33-44 on 4th November 2000