

To put that into perspective, if you take all of the people visiting Walt Disney World over a period of two years (that’s around 58 million people a year), and gave each of them one entry, 84 people would be winners.

In order to calculate odds of winning (or probability of winning), you have to know how many total entries. “Odds of winning depend upon the number of eligible entries received during the Entry Period.” But in the vast majority of cases, you’ll find this statement in the official rules, like this one from Ellen’s 2021 sweepstakes : For example, Quilted Northern Bathroom Tissue’s 2005 sweepstakes published odds of 1:11,000,000.

Sometimes, the odds will be explicitly stated. You’ll often find sweepstakes listing odds in their official rules, but they are normally quite high. How To Calculate Odds of Winning: Example Add both values in the odds (99 and 1 in this example) and place that value in the fraction’s denominator (bottom): 1 + 99 = 100.Place your chance of winning (1 in this example) in the numerator (top) of a fraction.

Using the above raffle example, your chances of losing are 99 (the “other” tickets) and your chances of winning are 1 (the ticket you purchased). Odds are a ratio of your chances of losing to your chances of winning.
