Club Raffles by the Numbers
Sporting and community clubs have run more than 2,100 raffles on RaffleLink since 2016: footy and netball clubs, cricket and surf clubs, Rotary and Lions, RSL sub-branches and show societies. Between them they have raised about $10 million. Club raffles are the smallest on the platform and the most frequent, which makes the pattern behind the good ones easy to see.
This is the baseline for clubs. Schools and charities have their own pages; clubs run raffles differently, and that difference is what the numbers below are about.
What a club raffle typically raises
| Club raffles on RaffleLink | |
|---|---|
| Median raised | $2,000 |
| Top quarter | $4,100 and up |
| Top 10% | $9,500 and up |
| Median number of buyers | 66 |
| Median campaign | 36 days |
| Clubs | 1,500+ |
Sixty-six buyers is a club: the members, the parents, the sponsors’ staff and the bar on a Saturday. Almost every lever below works by getting more from those sixty-six rather than by finding a thousand more.
What raffles of each size look like
Pick the total you are aiming at and read across:
| Raffle size | Buyers (median) | Typical ticket | Days on sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $2,000 | 43 | $5 | 29 |
| $2,000–$5,000 | 85 | $5 | 38 |
| $5,000–$20,000 | 167 | $10 | 53 |
| Over $20,000 | 407 | $20 | 88 |
Half of club raffles raise under $2,000. The ones that clear $5,000 share a recipe: a $10 or $20 ticket, eight weeks instead of four, a crowd two to three times the size, and a prize that justifies all three. We wrote those 435 raffles up separately in The Club Major Raffle.
Which clubs, which occasions
By type of club (keyed off the club’s name, so it under-counts):
| Club type | Raffles | Clubs | Median raised | Top quarter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community and service clubs | 480 | 354 | $1,800 | $4,400 |
| Football codes | 414 | 274 | $1,700 | $3,200 |
| Other sports | 303 | 236 | $1,900 | $3,500 |
| Netball | 89 | 60 | $1,900 | $3,200 |
| Surf lifesaving | 46 | 33 | $2,900 | $6,400 |
| Cricket | 36 | 32 | $1,800 | $2,800 |
| Golf | 19 | 12 | $3,300 | $4,500 |
Surf and golf clubs out-raise the field, and the reason is not the sport: their supporters skew older and their prizes skew bigger (boats, golf packages), so their tickets are dearer. A footy club with the same ticket and prize would land in the same place.
By occasion (keyed off the raffle title; most club raffles are simply “the raffle”):
| Occasion | Raffles | Median raised | Top quarter | Buyers | Ticket | Days on sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christmas raffle | 212 | $1,800 | $3,400 | 68 | $5 | 32 |
| Gala, dinner or ball | 159 | $2,100 | $3,500 | 73 | $5 | 27 |
| Major / annual raffle | 130 | $2,000 | $5,400 | 68 | $5 | 44 |
| Season raffle | 33 | $1,250 | $3,100 | 62 | $5 | 33 |
| 50/50 | 30 | $1,700 | $2,300 | 56 | $5 | 14 |
| Grand final raffle | 13 | $2,700 | $4,900 | 57 | $10 | 5 |
| Golf day | 8 | $3,500 | $6,100 | 78 | $5 | 52 |
The grand final raffle is the tell: it raises more than a Christmas raffle in five days, from fewer buyers, because everyone is in the same place with a reason to spend. An event in the calendar is worth more than a week on the calendar. (The extreme version, a dinner raffle that took $40,600 in one evening, is here.)
The prize sets the ticket
We classified the first prize of every club raffle:
| First prize | Raffles | Median raised | Top quarter | Buyers | Ticket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hamper or prize pack | 236 | $1,100 | $1,800 | 56 | $3 |
| Experience or event tickets | 332 | $1,400 | $2,600 | 52 | $5 |
| Gift card or voucher | 255 | $1,550 | $3,200 | 66 | $5 |
| Sporting goods or leisure | 150 | $2,000 | $4,100 | 64 | $5 |
| Jewellery, art or luxury goods | 94 | $2,100 | $3,200 | 65 | $5 |
| Holiday or accommodation | 334 | $2,600 | $5,400 | 82 | $5 |
| Cash | 187 | $2,600 | $6,000 | 69 | $10 |
| Electronics or appliance | 264 | $2,900 | $4,700 | 79 | $10 |
| Boat, motorbike, quad or other vehicle | 111 | $5,400 | $13,000 | 107 | $10 |
| Car or ute | 30 | $14,000 | $52,400 | 198 | $20 |
The club-specific finding is the vehicle row. Below the car tier, the best-performing club prize is a boat, a motorbike, a quad or a ride-on mower: five times a hamper raffle at the median, with a $10 ticket and a hundred-odd buyers. A boat first prize (17 raffles) grossed $15,000 at the median; a motorbike or quad (32 raffles) $7,000. These are prizes a club’s own sponsor network can often supply at cost, and they are the prizes a club crowd actually wants.
Cash is a strong second and is what the 50/50 format is built on, though it is not a permitted prize in Victoria; a sponsor-voucher ladder does the same job there. The 50/50 guide covers the format and the state rules.
The $5 ticket is the club default, and its biggest leak
| Ticket price | Raffles | Median raised | Buyers | Spend per buyer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1–$2 | 409 | $1,100 | 59 | $20 |
| $3–$5 | 950 | $1,700 | 63 | $28 |
| $6–$10 | 403 | $2,500 | 69 | $37 |
| $11–$20 | 182 | $3,500 | 72 | $45 |
| $21–$50 | 168 | $5,000 | 95 | $60 |
| $50+ | 45 | $15,900 | 106 | $146 |
Nearly two-thirds of club raffles charge $5 or less. The buyer count barely changes up the table; spend per buyer goes from $20 to $146. A $10 ticket with a pack (three for $25, ten for $80) raises half as much again as the $5 strip with the same sixty-six people, and on the current platform 59% of club raffle orders are already a pack. Our ticket pricing guide has the ladder.
Time helps, unless you have a room
| Campaign length | Raffles | Median raised | Top quarter | Buyers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A week or less | 177 | $1,300 | $2,100 | 58 |
| 1–3 weeks | 433 | $1,400 | $2,700 | 62 |
| 3–8 weeks | 928 | $2,000 | $4,000 | 66 |
| More than 8 weeks | 619 | $2,900 | $7,400 | 79 |
Longer raffles raise more, mostly because they are the bigger-prize raffles. The exception is the event raffle above: a grand final or presentation night raffle is short by design and should be. Two shapes, then: the season-long raffle with a real prize, and the one-night raffle sold in the room with Tap to Pay.
When clubs launch
Winter-sport season and the end of the year: March (248 launches) and November (250) lead, April and May follow, with a smaller August spike around finals. June is the biggest month by dollars, which is the major raffles drawing mid-season.
Make it a fixture
Club committees turn over, and the raffle often turns over with them: the buyer list, the sponsor who supplied the boat and the lesson about the $10 ticket all leave with the outgoing treasurer. The clubs that treat the raffle as a fixture (the season raffle, the grand final raffle, the Christmas raffle) keep the buyer list and the sponsor relationships from one committee to the next, and each raffle starts from that list rather than from zero.
How the money arrives
On RaffleLink, 98% of club raffle revenue arrives online, 59% of orders are a pack, and the average order is $34. About a quarter of club raffles run as a hybrid draw, with paper books sold at the bar merged into the same draw as the online tickets.
About the numbers
Figures come from raffles run on RaffleLink since 2016 by organisations typed as sporting or community clubs, with at least $500 in paid sales. Buyers are distinct purchasers. Club types and occasions are keyed off names and titles, so both under-count. Prize types come from a classification of each raffle’s first prize (machine-classified, then audited; vehicles checked by hand). Medians and quartiles are per raffle; no club’s result is identified. Australian dollars throughout.
The clubs page collects the formats, the compliance basics and the numbers in one place. There is no setup fee and nothing to pay until tickets sell.
