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Play the lottery for free!

John Fitzsimons
by Lovemoney Staff John Fitzsimons on 30 October 2011  |  Comments 8 comments

You could make millions without having to hand over a penny!

Play the lottery for free!

I play the National Lottery by direct debit, and am terrible at remembering to check the numbers each week. So whenever I see that I have an email in my inbox from the Lottery, my heart skips a beat.

How many numbers did I get? Am I now rich? Is there anyone within earshot who will hear me loudly swear when I discover, upon logging into the National Lottery website, that I actually only won £10?

I only play the main game so it doesn’t cost too much, but if I wanted to keep up with all the various different games, from Thunderball to the Health Lottery, it would cost me a fortune.

However, there’s now a way for you to play the National Lottery, absolutely free!

Who needs cashback?

A new site, freenationallotterytickets.co.uk has launched, which operates on the same basis as traditional cashback websites like Quidco or TopCashback. However, the difference is that rather than earn cashback, you earn points which can be exchanged for lottery tickets.

As with a normal cashback website, a number of retailers have partnered with freenationallotterytickets.co.uk. If you sign up for their services or purchase something from them, having gone to their site via the special links on freenationallotterytickets.co.uk, then your spend will be tracked. The only difference is that your reward is points rather than pounds.

How many points do I need?

You have four lottery ticket options when you want to redeem your points.

The purple lottery ticket

To sign up for a purple lottery ticket will cost you just 10 points. In this case, you will be in a syndicated ticket with up to 100 other members of the site.

The blue lottery ticket

With a blue lottery ticket, you’ll be syndicated with up to 50 other members. This will cost you 20 points.

The yellow lottery ticket

A yellow lottery ticket will cost you 100 points, and you will be syndicated with 10 other members.

The red lottery ticket

Red lottery tickets are not syndicated with other members. However, they will set you back 1,000 points.

Earning points

Of course, you can’t really judge what any of that means without seeing how many points you earn for the various deals. Here are ten deals available on freenationallotterytickets.co.uk. For the sake of reference, I’ve included the cashback you could earn for the same deal on Quidco and TopCashback.

Deal

Freenationallotterytickets

Quidco

Topcashback

Sun Bingo (open an account with £10 and play real money game)

12,000 points

£10

£10.10

Graze (free trial)

400 points

£1

£1.01

Virgin Media (sign up for any package)

32,000 points

£61.75

£62.36

Waterstones

20 points for every £1 spent

8%

7.07%

Tesco (first grocery order online)

2,000 points

£5

£5.05

Comet

8 points for every £1 spent

2.5%

2.52%

Mothercare

16 points for every £1 spent

5%

5.05%

Got Gold Get Cash (must return GoldPak within 90 days with at least 10 grams of gold inside)

12,000 points

£35

£35.35

lovefilm

4,000 points

£15

£7.57

Scottish Friendly Child Bond

40,000 points

£75

£50.50

It’s fair to say that freenationallotterytickets.co.uk has a fairly mixed performance here. If you used it to open a Sun Bingo account, you’d have enough points at your disposal to buy 12 tickets for you and you alone, compared to ten tickets from the return of each of the traditional cashback websites like Quidco or Topcashback.

In contrast, if you sent off gold to Got Gold Get Cash via one of the traditonal cashback sites, you’d be able to buy 35 lottery tickets with your return, compared to 12 with the lottery site.

Truly free tickets

Of course, all of this still relies on you actually spending a bit of cash in the first place. The cashback or free lottery tickets are just a welcome bonus.

However, there are ways to get genuinely free lottery tickets via the site. For starters, just signing up to the site will see you receive free tickets for the next four draws – you’ll receive the equivalent of blue tickets for the next two Lotto draws, and purple tickets for the next two Euromillion draws.

And then there are free offers which won’t cost you a penny in order for you to get some points, like signing up to fill out surveys. Yes, it will take a little time, but if it means you end up with a winning ticket, it will be worth it!

Is it worth it?

Personally, I’ll be registering just for the free tickets, and perhaps fill out a survey or two now and again if I have a spare hour. But I already use Quidco, and quite like having the option of spending my cashback however I like. In fairness to freenationallotterytickets.co.uk, once you get to 25,000 points you do have the option of cashing them in for £25 in cash, but that’s still a little cumbersome for me.

So what do you think? Is this a nice alternative to traditional cashback sites, or just a clever marketing gimmick?

More: Chance to get £200 will disappear soon | It sucks to win the lottery

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Comments (8)

  • Qexit
    Love rating 12
    Qexit said

    Just for the record, you would have considerable difficulty playing the Health Lottery through the National Lottery website as it is nothing to do with them. It is run by a totally different organisation.

    Report on 30 October 2011  |  Love thisLove  1 love
  • Mike10613
    Love rating 600
    Mike10613 said

    So these tickets are syndicated with between 10 and 10 other people? They are worth between 1p and 10p. Someone on minimum wage can earn enough to buy a £1 lottery ticket in 10 minutes. Is it worth it?

    Report on 30 October 2011  |  Love thisLove  1 love
  • JRAY100
    Love rating 52
    JRAY100 said

    I was impressed when a rather independent friend of mine invited me to an upmarket London lawn tennis club's mock horse racing evening... he was convinced that he would win on horse No. 7 in the last race (No. 7 hadn't won as then)... when it won, I said that he should buy a lottery ticket... he leaned over and whispered "I've no need to".

    Impressive!... it is a sad judgment when a country resorts to a lottery for riches (or investing in a property bubble)... hard-working and enterprising souls should be able to 'make it' anyway!

    Report on 31 October 2011  |  Love thisLove  0 loves
  • Steviebaby1959
    Love rating 28
    Steviebaby1959 said

    Let me get this clear in my head, with a blue lottery ticket, you’ll be syndicated with up to 50 other members, this will cost you 20 points. If you go in to Comet and purchase something, you obtain 8 points per £1 spent, therefore, you have to spend £2.50 to obtain 20 points, for one ticket, and you are then placed in a syndicate with 49 others, this is a rip-off, not a marketing gimmick.

    I think I'll stick to the lottery at work, £1 per week, for 10 of us in the syndicate.

    I used to play Euromillions also, but, the ticket prices rose in the UK in November 2009 to £2 each, because they weren't making enough profit, yet, the rest of Europe still only pay 2 Euros, which at today's currency exchange rate is approx. £1.75p, yet, the Brits have to pay £2, it's all a money making scam and not what the lottery was intended for in the first place.

    Report on 31 October 2011  |  Love thisLove  0 loves
  • JoDowning
    Love rating 0
    JoDowning said

    You don't get it do you stevie. You spent £2.50 at comet. so you BOUGHT something for your money and then ON TOP of that you get 20 lottery points = 2p or 1/50 of a lottery ticket. not a rip off... an alternative to cashback.

    if you had to GIVE them £2.50 for 2p worth of lottery ticket then yeh you might be right. however your wrong because you clearly didnt read the above article properly.

    Please get the basic information about a topic before making dramatic posts that declare something a rip off before you even understand what the site actually does.

    Anyway. great site for small cashback offers like surveys but if I'm going to get either £100 or 100 lottery tickets for switching car insurance, ill take the £100 that quidco or TopCashBack might give me.

    Also quidco and topcashback both need you to get to £25 before you can withdraw, which makes freenationallotterytickets exactly the same in that way.

    Report on 31 October 2011  |  Love thisLove  0 loves
  • shelley27
    Love rating 0
    shelley27 said

    I use the cashback website TopCashback & it's brilliant, I've had over £180 in cash, I just over a year, just for clicking through the site when I do my shopping, I'm spending no extra money to get the cashback. But just to correct JoDowning's comment, I don't know about Quidco as I don't use it but there is not a minimum £25 before you can claim your cash, I've claimed paypal payments for as little as £5 as long as you leave 14 days between payouts then you will have no problem. I highly recommend TopCashback & really enjoy getting a few pounds back when I shop. I'm not sure about this lottery cashback, I think I would rather get the cash & then buy my own lottery ticket.

    Report on 02 November 2011  |  Love thisLove  0 loves
  • Steviebaby1959
    Love rating 28
    Steviebaby1959 said

    JoDowning, please don't patronise me, the tongue-in-cheek comment, that you obviously missed, was that I had to WASTE £2.50 in Comet buying a load of crap, before I could even obtain a lottery ticket, whereas, I only spend £1 ordinarily on buying my ticket every week at work, without having to endure a shopping trip to Comet, or, anywhere else for that matter and being FORCED to buy something that you probably don't want, need, or will ever use, JUST TO OBTAIN A TICKET. We all appreciate that these companies don't give you something for nothing, but, to have to spend 3/4/5/6/7 times as much as usual, buying a load of useless tat in the bloody process, as if I'd get any bargains in Mothercare at my age, and then have to share whatever possible winnings there may be on the lottery draw with a minimum of 49 OTHER PEOPLE, is to me a load of rubbish and a complete bloody rip-off, I stand by my original comment, please wake up......

    Report on 02 November 2011  |  Love thisLove  0 loves
  • jonesy6671
    Love rating 0
    jonesy6671 said

    no point in arguing about this guys really is there? ;-)) - I have splinters as I'm sitting on the fence so often! however.... the fact is that if you are going to spend money on a product ANYWAY, if you purchase said product via one of the sites that gives you cash back or a point towards a lottery ticket without having to pay any more than you were going to IN THE FIRST PLACE...... surely that is a bonus?

    :-)

    Report on 03 November 2011  |  Love thisLove  0 loves

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