How the Supernova Sweepstake works

The Supernova Sweepstake is a free tool to help you organise a sweepstake for World Cup 2026. This World Cup has 48 teams — more than ever before — which means more admin for anyone trying to run one. We built a free tool to help anyone set up their office sweepstake without all the hassle.

You need at least 4 players to run a sweepstake. After that, any number of colleagues or friends from 4 to 48 gets a fair draw — small pools (4–7 players) just give everyone a lot more teams each.

Teams are seeded 1–48 based on FIFA world rankings and placed into seeded pots. When the draw happens, everyone gets a pick from the top seeds first — then the rest of the teams are assigned from there. This keeps it fair: Harry doesn't end up with France and Spain while Beth gets Haiti and New Zealand.

The maximum is 48 players (one team each) and the minimum is 4 (twelve teams each). Anywhere between those two, we make sure everyone gets an even number of teams — and if any are left over, the lowest-ranked teams are assigned randomly.

Create a pool →

Create a pool and share the link with your colleagues. Once they confirm their email address, you'll see them appear in the pool. If a colleague is away or OOO but you know they'd love to take part, you can enter their email address directly — they'll be added to the pool with a pending icon until they accept the invite.

You can also set up the pool details: the buy-in amount, the prize structure (winner takes all, or add bonus prizes?), and when you want the draw to take place. Everyone needs a deadline 🏁

Try it yourself — configure a demo draw below and hit Launch:

Yes. Teams are ordered into seeding pots so that strong and weak teams are spread evenly, then the team names and player names are drawn in a random order. No one knows who is going to get who until the live draw starts.

Once all the teams have been drawn, the organiser confirms the draw and locks in everyone's teams. All players then get an email confirming their teams.

You don't have to watch the live draw. Once the organiser has confirmed the teams, you'll receive an email with your teams and a link to see who everyone else got in the sweepstake.

In a standard sweepstake it's winner takes all — whoever has the winning team gets the whole prize pot. When organising a Supernova Sweepstake you have the option to include bonus prizes, so you could get your money back even if your team doesn't win the tournament. The current bonus prizes are:

• ⚽ Golden Boot — if your team has the tournament's top scorer
• 🏆 Goal of the Tournament — if your team has FIFA's official goal of the tournament
• 🐣 Youngest Goalscorer — if your team has the youngest goalscorer
• 👳 Oldest Goalscorer — if your team has the oldest goalscorer
• 🚪 First Team Eliminated — for the first team officially knocked out of the group stage

In a winner takes all sweepstake, when your team is out, you're out. However, Supernova Sweepstakes with bonus prizes mean that people can still win sub prizes even if their team was knocked out — Goal of the Tournament, Youngest Goalscorer, First Eliminated and more.

No — the line-up is fixed once the draw starts. If someone wants to join after the draw has been done, you'll need to create a fresh pool. Sorry!

As an organiser you can remove someone before starting the draw, but once you start the draw the names and teams are locked in.

No — there are only 48 teams. If you have more than 48 keen colleagues, break it into two sweepstakes between different departments within your company.

Yes — if you want to run a sweepstake just for fun, or have physical prizes for the winner and no buy-in, you can set the buy-in to Free and there will be no money shown on the pool page or during the live draw.

No. This tool does not collect or process payments. Any contributions are arranged privately between participants. This keeps the site free to use and GDPR-friendly, and means no middlemen take a cut of your prize pool.

It is possible to manually keep track of who's paid by tapping the 💷 icon next to a player's name to mark them as paid — this is just a helpful checklist and doesn't sync with any bank accounts or payment services.

If enough people enjoy the Supernova Sweepstake, we'll look at ways to bundle in office sweepstakes with payroll for Novabook clients — so less messing around with cash and bank details.

A low-stakes sweepstake between friends or colleagues is treated differently to commercial betting under UK rules. We don't take a cut, hold the money, or set odds. If you're running it at work, a quick word with HR is never a bad idea.

Novabook — the accountant for start-ups. We help fast-growing companies move faster by streamlining back-office accounting tasks. We created the Supernova Sweepstake to help minimise the admin around setting up a bit of office fun.

The Supernova Sweepstake is a tool inspired by the Supernova Substack, written by Novabook founder Stephen Wilks.