Woman reveals results after buying £880 worth of National Lottery scratchcards
A woman has revealed the results of a year-long gambling stint after she and her friends spent £880 on National Lottery scratchcards.
Megan Smith Evans, a tattoo artist from Birmingham, documented the experience online after she and her group of friends decided to run their own scratchcard syndicate.
The group purchased £5 tickets every Friday from April to November in 2024 to see how much they could collectively win.
However, they have ended up with less than they started with.
Rather than opting for a traditional lottery syndicate, the group chose scratchcards instead, setting aside every ticket throughout the year to scratch them all off together in one anticlimatic reveal, Bristol Live reports.
Ms Smith Evans admitted she had been "so hopeful" throughout the experiment, convinced spending such a significant sum gave them a reasonable chance of at least breaking even.
Despite acknowledging £880 was "so much money", the group remained confident they would at least recoup their cash in the future.
In a TikTok video documenting the experience, the ex-scratchcard addict said it took the group around an hour to work through all the cards, with every single one triple-checked to make sure nothing was missed.
They had even drawn up a syndicate contract in anticipation of a big win.
The results, however, were disappointing.
Ms Smith Evans said: "We had a second person checking them, we had a syndicate contract in case we won big and we didn't even win our money back.
“I think we lost about £50 each, and it was just gutting."
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The experience left such a lasting impression Megan said it had put her off scratchcards entirely, both in-person and online.
She said: "We were all so hopeful and we didn't win it, and, actually, it's put me off Scratchcards for life.
“I used to love scratchcards – including online ones. I used to be obsessed actually."
Ms Smith Evans reflected on the amount she had spent on scratchcards over the years, admitting she had splashed out a significant sum without ever winning anything notable back.
She said online scratchcards in particular felt like "such fake money" and were too easy to spend impulsively, whereas physical cards at least offered a degree of "in-person fun”.
The former gambler concluded: "But yeah, it's put me off Scratchcards completely. I spent way too much money on them."
The video racked up a significant number of views and drew a wide range of responses from people eager to share their own views on scratchcards.
One viewer said: "The suspense of waiting that long to scratch them must have been horrendous. Gutted you didn't win your money back on them."
Another simply replied: "I'm still not over it."
A third viewer said they had tried scratchcards themselves on occasion but no longer bought them regularly.
It is worth noting the odds of winning on a £5 scratchcard are approximately one in four, although this figure includes breakeven cards where the player wins back their original £5 stake.
Odds can vary slightly between different games and are typically outlined on the reverse of each individual card.
The National Lottery has also introduced a restriction limiting customers to purchasing a maximum of ten scratchcards in a single transaction, a policy that applies across all retail outlets where National Lottery products are sold.
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