Introduction
WinWink is a prize draw that focuses on extremely heavily on Pokémon cards, and other collectable prizes that may appeal to their ‘gamer’ niche.
Key Information
- URL: winwink.co.uk
- Organiser: WINWINK LTD
- Type: Competitions & Prize Draws
- Prizes: Cash, Other Prizes
Review Summary
WinWink does have some potential to be a competition that can be recommended, but due to the issues with transparency, the draw history, and weird things like claims about being a skill-based game even though there is not a single ‘skill element’ at play… It’s clear that they’ve just copied the format from other competition websites without either knowing about the legalities – or alternatively not caring about them.
While previously I considered WinWink to be a slightly better version of Gaming Giveaways, after their introduction of ‘ripping packs’ their updated score is 2.4 out of 10 in our Real Score, making them the lowest scoring competition tied with Good Life Plus.
Also, the fact that they run competitions focusing on Pokémon cards, and some competitions for a chance to win credit to enter a competition… That’s just… up to *6 layers of gambling and chances?
(* = First to enter for a chance to win credit, then to enter for a chance to win a Pokémon prize, then there’s a chance that you may or may not get the prizes, then even if you get the prizes there’s the chance that if you rip them you won’t get anything good, and then there’s the chance that even if you get decent pulls the English cards’ QC lets you down and you get poor quality cards, and then even if you get something decent and grade it there’s the chance that you won’t get a good grade….)
If you wish to learn more about how I’ve calculated the Real Score for WinWink, please see the below sections!
Real Score
You are able to find basic information on the website easily, such as that the competition is operated by WINWINK LTD, a company based in Trowbridge.
However, under “How it works” the first link is a link to a TrustPilot page… Which doesn’t exactly have much to do with “How it works” as such.
Let’s have a look at the TrustPilot profile then! There are quite a few negative and recent reviews like this:
… But coming back to the actual “How it works” – the first thing they address in their FAQ is whether the company is a scam or not. Ok, a bit weird. Still not exactly “How it works” – but whatever!
And one thing stood out instantly… They say they are a “skill based competition” – but I’ve entered a couple of their draws as a test and there was no “skill” required?? Not sure what they are on about! (Maybe they used to ask a simple question before you could buy a ticket? And have then since removed these so the website is just out of date)
Even though the “How it works” page isn’t really filled with information about how it works; I found the following bit of information that might be useful for some:
That’s right, only one entrant per household is allowed. So, if you want to enter – make sure nobody else does in your household or they will disqualify “ALL ENTRIES” with no refunds from the same address. Seems a bit harsh? Also, as that was hidden in the terms page and not clear at all, it wasn’t really ‘available’ as such.
There are a bunch of previous winners or names on their website available, and a mix of pictures that are for promotional purposes mostly of the winners… But as the page is literally just basic text and you can’t see all the ticket numbers, entries, or any proof of the auto draws being done properly… I’m not 100% sold.
If you scroll down to the page where they show the winners and click on the “Show all previous results”… You get off the website and end up on their Facebook page???? It doesn’t look like that you can check any of the (auto draw) winners’ names more than a month in the past.
I was just quickly going to cross-reference some of the live draw winners by comparing the results from the live draw and what’s on the winner’s page but… It looks like the main live draws are only on Facebook, and these winners are not updated on the website at all either.
So, who knows! There definitely appears to be some winners, especially for the live draws, but it’s very hard to verify what’s going on with the large number of auto draws and very little available information.
The live draws that are performed twice a week, appear to be done in a very similar and nice format than a lot of the other competitions. First the presenter pulls up all the ticket numbers and you can see the names, and then uses Google’s own random number generator to pull the winning number.
It has to be pointed out; that it wouldn’t be overly complicated to replicate the simple-looking random number generator. Especially, as the view is heavily cropped, and then have this pull up specific numbers… So, while it looks like it’s all above board – there’s still room for improvement as you can’t tell that they’re actually on the legitimate random number generator! This is similar to the view you get with Gaming Giveaways‘ live draws as well.
However, I’m not sure how the auto draws are being performed. Their FAQ section does explain how they do it with a slightly condescending explanation of a specific somewhat acceptable pseudo-RNG, but much like with many other competitions there’s very little transparency with how the numbers were exactly being generated. It’s all well and good to say that something is random – but how can it be verified?
Additionally, after the launch of their ‘Ripping Packs’ competitions – the process is even less transparent. Please see the end of this review for an example.
Despite the mention to being a “skill based game” on their FAQ section, WinWink operates as a free draw with a paid entry. This means that you should be able to enter the competition for free, in a way that is no less convenient than purchasing a paid ticket. But also, the free entry should not be more expensive either. Which means that if there are draws that cost less than a stamp (which there are), the competition is not adhering to the Gambling Commission’s guidelines.
At least the “postal entry” is very visible and on the same level. Which is how it should be:
However, their terms for the free postal entries aren’t the best ones. Much like with Gaming Giveaways and several other competitions, they say that your entries won’t be acknowledged. You can guess where the entries will end up if the competitions don’t even need to acknowledge this.
But there’s also another part that I find annoying… Which is the fact that if they sell out (which might happen often with very small amount of tickets) – your entry won’t count.
For contrast, here are 7days Performance’s free postal entry rules:
- You can get more than one entry in their draws (depending on value of the prize – which is in line with the Gambling Commissions guidelines about the free entry method not being more expensive than the paid one)
- They will acknowledge your entry
- You are able to do multiple entries with separate post cards
- If you miss out on the closing date (note, not if they sell out) – and they receive your entry within 72 hour of closing you’ll get credit to play their other games!
That’s a lot more like it! Although, I still don’t recommend entering any competition with the free postal entry method as I believe it to be a waste of time.
Finally, with the introduction of ‘ripping packs’ – there is no argument for WinWink to be not classified as gambling. The experience is completely the same as if you were to go to an online casino, and play any slot machine.
WinWink has been around since 2020 (as a limited company at least), so they do have some kind of a track record. While matching the winner’s pictures with exact draws is extremely hard, there seems to be a decent number of social proof of the draws being done, and images of people posing with their prizes.
If you’ve read any of my other reviews – you’ll know by now that I’m not a big fan of misleading prize pools and pots. As an example, the prize in the middle just has the number £50,000 – and no mention that if it’s a grand prize, prize pot, or something else.
If you click into the competition… You’ll find that the grand prize is £1,000’s worth of Pokémon cards:
But aside this point, they do have some good prizes in addition to some of the more low-value stuff!
At the time of writing this review – the “£100,000 prize pool” competition has:
- 2 x £5,000 cash prizes
- 1 x Rolex worth £9,000
- 10 x £1,000 cash
- 10 x £5,000 cash
- And a ton of smaller tech / gadget / collectible prizes
If we compare this to Gaming Giveaways (as the competition with a very similar offering), the prizes of WinWink are a lot better.
However, while a £5,000 cash prize could and would be nice for most of us – it’s not as good as some of the bigger prizes or cash alternatives like 7days Performance or BOTB have.
Originally, I scored WinWink fairly high for the odds as it seemed like they were not too bad.
Now, after the introduction of their ‘ripping packs’ game, and after realising that they don’t actually have to give away all of the prizes they put up for grabs… I can’t honestly comment on the actual odds, as with most of their draws there appears to be a lack of transparency – and as in the example below – they may do multiple draws without giving out any of the main prizes.
I’d recommend looking at competitions with fixed main prizes, for real odds of actually winning something worthwhile.
Some of the prizes seemed good a while back, some of the prizes not so much. When I originally wrote the review, I thought to be able to win £5,000 in tax free cash for £1.69 wasn’t as good as some other competitions, but it was still a decent amount of money! (And ‘almost potentially life-changing‘ for some)
But coming back to the not-so-much… After the launch of ‘Ripping Packs’ and noticing that they are able to run competitions in which they don’t necessarily give any of the main prizes out… It’s safe to say that WinWink is not very good value overall.
There are some competitions that do have a main prize such as 1k or 10k cash, which will be given out from what I can tell – but there are also competitions with only instant win prizes available (like the ‘ripping packs’ ones). Or alternatively, there are competitions like the “£5000 Lego” one, where the grand prize is just one set of Lego.
If you want to enter a competition that is better value and better prizes, I’d just enter something like 7days Performance instead.
Note – the part below is now outdated, as the website has updated and all mentions to adopting animals have disappeared. But I shall leave it up so you can see what they used to do, or claim.
But now? There is a mention of being a proud supporter of “Hashtag United”, which isn’t exactly real philanthropy (at least not to me personally).
WinWink appears to ‘adopt animals’ through WWF for the main prize winners, but how this is exactly done isn’t well elaborated.
If you go to WWF’s website, you can see that you are able to donate and ‘adopt’ an animal either on monthly basis, or as a one-off. If you are doing a one-off donation, the minimum for this is £36. If you do a monthly amount, this is as little as £3. Also, as you are able to cancel the monthly donation, when would this get done? After first month? After a year? (I highly doubt they’re paying an ongoing and ever-increasing monetary amount for adopted animals)
The probable scenario is that they would either do the £36 one off – or if being very cheeky and cheap for maximum ‘green-washing’ and promotional ROI, they might just do a £3 as one off and then cancel the donation.
Finally, as the amount of ‘adopted animals’ hasn’t changed in the last 5 months (at the time of writing this), it’s safe to guess that they’ve stopped doing this. As you’d think that updating a single number would be easy enough to do (even if completely arbitrary and wouldn’t require any proof of actually having adopted any animals)
But then again, the prizes won counter hasn’t been updated either for 5 months so… Might be just out of date. Who knows. But then again, there is no proof of any of these animals being adopted visible on the website, and there are no mentions in the terms and conditions so this isn’t defined either…
The most likely scenario is that they’ve come up with a promotional ‘feel-good’ donation idea, that sounds great but doesn’t require any oversight, proof, or even actual donations. At least they’re saying that they are doing something, but is this better than not doing anything at all for the greater good if there is no proof of this?
Please note that the below was done originally before they had updated their website and launched their new game mode ‘ripping packs’. I shall leave the below as it is, as I don’t massively want to spend more money to find out if they have changed their payment processing or not.
For the bonus point I’d like to focus on how they take payments, and that there’s something very weird going on. While I can only speculate, I can make a well-educated guess or two having dealt with high-risk online payment processors in the past professionally.
I thought I’d play a couple of tickets to see how the competition works myself… First, I noticed that they’re using Viva Wallet. This is a known high-risk payment processor, commonly used by companies that sell CBD products in the UK, and other companies that may struggle to get a business bank account from more legitimate high-street banks. Which in its own is fair enough, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Viva, and I’ve used them before myself.
However, once the payment goes through – this is where it gets a bit weird. The payment wasn’t actually processed by WinWink – but a CBD company called ZenBears!?
This is incredibly strange, and my best guess would be that they know someone from ZenBears, and they’ve just plugged this website in onto the Viva Wallet account owned by the other company. OR there is an affiliation between the two companies that isn’t clear. However, from looking at the Companies House listings of WINWINK LTD and ZenBears which is operated by INNOVATIVE WELLNESS BRANDS LTD according to their website – there doesn’t appear to be a clear connection.
Wonder how that works for accounting if a cannabis company takes your money first?
One thing that is clear, the screenshot I took of the website has “PayPal” listed in the payment methods on the front page (the featured image of this review), but 5 months later this has vanished of the accepted payment methods. Maybe WinWink was using another payment provider but got kicked off, or maybe they’ve just stopped accepting PayPal because of their frees (and/or the Honey scandal).
While this is at least a bit alarming, and while this does not necessarily have a real negative effect on anything… I think anyone would agree that it’s really weird to have your money taken by a CBD company that doesn’t have anything to do with the competition you’ve entered. (Or if they are affiliated, that’s not made clear in the slightest)
A closer look at: 'Ripping packs'
WinWink released a new form of gambling, called ‘ripping packs’. This game is in effect just another form of an instant wins type of a game, that is offered by many competition sites. The difference here being to other instant win games is, that they’ve added a kind of an animation that much resembles a slots machine in a casino.
And in this case it’s also a way of capitalising on the poor availability of actual Pokémon cards amongst those who seek the dopamine hits from opening packs, in a way that allows you to spend a lot of money quickly just for the chance – much like any other online casino does.
Funnily enough, they seem to be self-aware of this to the point of calling it “addicting” in their advertising as well! So, while I’ve made a few jokes about some competitions being ‘borderline gambling’ – on this occasion I think it’s more than deserved to refer to WinWink as actual gambling.
You are also able to ‘try it for free’ – which means that you will be presented with an animation that shows that if you had actually played, you would have won something.
Here’s where it gets… Interesting.
As the case is with these instant wins comps; you are able to see which prizes are won and which are still available, so I thought I’d come back and check the results of the competitions that were live (there were 3 different ones at the time). And unsurprisingly, no main prizes were won – despite having sold thousands of tickets.
Some speculation
Of course, there is the chance that this is just by accident or by real chance. But then again, leaving these competitions completely to chance would be possibly devastating for WinWink as there’s a chance to have all the main prizes won (by chance) when just a few tickets are sold. This would of course mean that no more players will actually end up playing, as they would see the prizes are already gone.
And this works the other way as well, if you see that a good portion of the tickets are sold but nothing has been won yet, you would be inclined to think that you have better chances of winning.
Example of ‘Ripping Packs’ competition results
Below are the screenshots of the three competitions that ended. All of which still had the main prizes remaining.
Small sidenote: I think it’s also interesting that these PSA-graded cards don’t have pictures of them so that you are able to check the certification numbers and the actual condition of the cards. Rather, a generic illustration of what the card would be like. Therefore, there’s a chance that they don’t even have the cards yet, but rather would purchase these after someone wins them (if they ever get won that is).
1. The main competition which had more than a third of the tickets sold:
2. Second competition with more than 40% of tickets sold: 
3. Third competition with a bit over tenth of the tickets sold: 
Granted, some of the smaller prizes were won (such as ‘mystery booster boxes’ which might RRP around £100 or even less) – but I find it extremely interesting that not a single main prize was won out of the three ‘competitions’.
If anything, this looks like a really good business model that you can raise tens of thousands and not have to give a single expensive prize away! And as there is a chance that they didn’t even possess the actual prizes yet, this makes it even better of a business model as you don’t have to purchase prizes to run the competition in the first place! So, congratulations to them for being very business-savvy, I suppose.
Normally, you are able to compare the competitions and how ‘greedy’ (or good value) they are by looking at what they are giving away, and then by how many tickets they are trying to sell and how much money they are trying to raise. But on this occasion… As it looks like it’s possible for them to not give out the main prizes at all if they don’t sell ‘enough tickets for them to be won by chance’… Who knows!
But... What if you really want Pokémon cards?
Even if you are not able to find packs for ripping at RRP in the UK currently (not easily at least or with a decent amount of effort and time wasted / miles travelled), you can always buy singles if you don’t want to support scalpers.
As an example, the ‘ripping packs’ competition suggested that I would spend £50 for 10 goes at looking at the slots machine animation, for an illusion of being able to win something. Bloody Hell!
In order to prove a point, I thought I’d jump on Ebay.co.uk and see what I could actually get for £50 and here’s what I got in NM/better with decent centering from sellers with 100% positive feedback.
- Japanese McDonald’s Pikachu 020/M-P
- Pikachu 005/025 Celebrations Full Art
- Flying Pikachu VMAX 007/025 Celebrations
- Surfing Pikachu V 008/025 Celebrations
So… What would you do? Would you part with £50 for a near 0% chance to get anything, or would you part with £50 and get something cool with near 100% certainty? I’m not sure about you, but for me the choice is pretty simple. (And of course… I’m certain that there are individuals who have spent a lot more than £50 in ‘ripping packs’ on WinWink, but this was just an example…)
While it is clearly all just a game of chance, and of course nobody is expecting to win something every time… To find out that not one of the main prizes were won after the competitions closed? Yikes.
Notes
Update: Even though this review was partially dated or done on the old website, it still held pretty much true no matter what their updated website looks like.
The only real change with the introduction of the ‘pack ripping’ was, that the way they operate is now even less transparent and more blatant gambling. As a part of the update, the scoring in ‘Value’, ‘Process’ and ‘Legality’ was reduced to the minimum score. The Philanthropy section was also updated, as in the past WinWink was ‘adopting animals’ for the winners, but this has since been discontinued.
Recommended Reviews
Frequently Asked Questions
WinWink appears to be somewhat legitimate, but like many other competitions they have lots of room to improve their processes and transparency in particular. I think it’s safe to say that they definitely give out prizes and they have enough proof of winners… But there are quite a few sticking points with the competition itself and how they operate. I recommend reading my full review above for more insights.
WinWink operates in a very similar fashion to other competitions in the UK, with the key exception that they are focused on the ‘gamer-appealing Pokémon niche’ and ‘ripping packs’ game mode.
Simply put, you are able to buy entries for draws, and potentially win one of the prizes. Some of the prizes are instant wins, some will be drawn in their Live Draws.
That said, I would recommend reading this review in full to get a better picture of the styles of draws.
WinWinks office is registered at Trowbridge, in a grade 2 listed building. They share the registered office address with a few other businesses and active & dissolved ventures.
WinWink is owned by WINWINK LTD, which is owned by its two directors Ryan Mark Collins-Thomas and Rory Lailvaux.
The most prominent WinWink presenter (at least if going by the visibility in advertising), is a Twitch streamer that goes by the name Excidx, or Laura.
https://www.twitch.tv/excidx
https://www.instagram.com/excidx
Note: This question and answer is only because here because it seemed to be a common question in relation to WinWink…
Pristine Competitions
The Watch Grab
