People's Postcode Lottery: Study reveals 'unluckiest' areas for big wins

People's Postcode Lottery is best known for its enthusiastic adverts and huge prize draws, seeing thousands of pounds dished out to neighbourhoods across the UK each day. New research has revealed the UK areas least likely to win the Postcode Lottery, with one major city having remarkably low winning figures.

Casino experts at VIP Grinders analysed the total number of Postcode Lottery wins across each city and town in England as of October 2024. The total number of wins was divided by the number of postcode districts in each area to reveal those with the lowest average number of wins.

West Central London (WC) is the unluckiest area for Postcode Lottery wins, with an average of just 0.56 wins per postcode district. The area’s 16 postcode districts have seen just nine wins in total - and it seems to be a running trend for those in the capital.

East Central London (EC), West London (W), Southwest London (SW) and Kingston upon Thames (KT) are all within the 10 unluckiest postcodes, with just 825 wins between them. On the other hand, the luckiest area in the Postcode Lottery is Preston (PR), with an impressive 43.64 average wins per postcode district.

Closely following are Warrington (WA) and Blackpool (FY), with averages of 35.69 and 34.50, respectively - with all three locations within just 30 kilometres of eachother.

Telma Casaca, head of publishing at VIP Grinders, has commented: "It's no wonder so many people try their luck with the Postcode Lottery, especially with prizes reaching up to £500,000. While the postcodes are chosen using a random algorithm to make the outcome unpredictable, it is interesting to see such a big difference in how often postcodes in certain districts are drawn.

“It is fascinating that so many of the unluckiest areas being in and around London, making it England’s unluckiest area. One reason why areas like West Central London and East Central London could have seen more wins is the number of players registered in each postcode; if a lower number of people enter from the same postcode, they have a lower chance of winning the Postcode Millions prize compared to multiple people entering together.

“However, this doesn’t apply to other prizes in the Postcode Lottery. So, if certain postcode sectors have worse than average luck with the £30,000 prize, it’s likely because there are less individual postcodes registered in that area than other areas in England.”

You can see stats and figures for the 10 unluckiest postcodes in the UK in below: