The Odds of Winning the Lottery in the UK
The lottery system used in the UK is known as a 6/49 or 649. This means that there you get a choice of 6 numbers from 1-49. There are 13,983,816 different six-ball combinations, which means that you have just under a 1 in 14 million chance of matching all six numbers and scooping the jackpot.
The table above shows the odds of matching 0 to 6 numbers, with the average payout per person (taken from Saturday games).
| Number of balls matched |
Odds | Average payout per person |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 1 in 13,983,816 | £2,100,000 |
| 5 + bonus | 1 in 2,330,636 | £102,000 |
| 5 | 1 in 55,492 | £1,530 |
| 4 | 1 in 1,033 | £62 |
| 3 | 1 in 57 | £10 |
| 2 | 1 in 7.5 | n/a |
| 1 | 1 in 2.4 | n/a |
| 0 | 1 in 2.3 | n/a |
The top 5 lucky lottery locations are:
1. Newcastle (£38,798,331)
2. Manchester (£27,562,458)
3. Chester (£21,278,045)
4. Birmingham (£18,467,911)
5. Peterborough (£18,408,483)
