Estimated Total Tickets Printed
Total Tickets Printed = Total Prizes at a Tier × Odds for that Tier
Example
A ticket has 5 grand prizes ($100,000) with 1-in-500,000 odds:
Total Tickets Printed = 5 × 500,000 = 2,500,000 tickets
We calculate this for multiple prize tiers and take the median.
Estimated Remaining Tickets
Remaining Tickets = Total Tickets Printed × (1 - Fraction Claimed)
Example
7,000 of 10,000 total prizes have been claimed (70%):
Remaining Tickets = 2,500,000 × (1 - 0.70) = 750,000 tickets
Expected Return
Return Rate = (Total Prize Money Remaining / Remaining Tickets) / Ticket Cost
Example
$400,000 in unclaimed prizes, 750,000 tickets remaining, $5 ticket cost:
Return Rate = ($400,000 / 750,000) / $5 = 10.7%
Ticket Expiry & Withdrawals
A scratch ticket can be withdrawn from sale and given an expiry date while prizes are
still unclaimed. After that expiry date, the remaining prizes can no longer be
claimed — even if our unclaimed-prize count still shows them. A big unclaimed jackpot on
an expiring ticket is therefore a value trap: it inflates the ticket's apparent return
even though it can never actually be won.
How we handle it:
- Countdown warning before expiry. A ticket with a known upcoming expiry
shows a "⚠ Expires <date>" badge with a
day countdown on the rankings, so you can factor the deadline into your decision.
- Excluded after expiry. Once a ticket is past its expiry date, we remove
it from the value rankings entirely — its unclaimed prizes are no longer winnable, so
ranking it on them would be misleading.
- See the full list on the Expiring & withdrawn
tickets page, which shows each flagged ticket's expiry date, countdown, and the largest
unclaimed prize at risk.
Important limitations of this data:
- Only tickets in an active withdrawal campaign are listed. BC Lottery
publishes withdrawal/expiry notices for a small set of tickets at a time (roughly quarterly).
Most tickets are not listed, so the absence of an expiry warning
does not mean a ticket isn't expiring — we simply have no notice for it yet.
- Ontario has no expiry data. OLG does not publish a comparable list of
ended/expiring tickets, so Ontario tickets cannot be expiry-flagged at all.
Important Caveats
- This is gambling. Expected return is a statistical average - most tickets lose.
- Estimates aren't perfect. Calculations rely on assumptions about ticket distribution.
- Data has a delay. BC Lottery doesn't update prize counts in real-time.
- Return rates under 100% mean you lose money on average.
- Not all tickets are covered. We only show return rates for tickets where we have prize odds data. Some older or less common tickets may only appear in the "Big Prizes" view without return calculations.
- Tickets can expire with prizes unclaimed. We flag known expiring tickets and drop expired ones (see Ticket Expiry & Withdrawals above), but BC only publishes a limited list, so a ticket without a warning may still be expiring. Ontario expiry data isn't available at all.
- This site is not affiliated with BC Lottery.