What Are the Advantages of Drawing a Winner Live vs Offline?

Question

Accepted Answer

A live draw lets entrants watch the winner being picked at random, which an offline draw announced later cannot show. The recording also becomes a post. Expand to see how to draw a live winner.

An offline draw asks entrants to trust a name you announce afterward. A live draw shows them the pick as it happens, on a livestream, a screen share or a recording they can watch again. Competitions Live Draw runs that draw from your Gleam Competition entries.

Live draw

Entrants watch the winner being picked
Works on a livestream, a video call or a screen recording
The recording doubles as a post for Instagram, YouTube or X

Here is how to draw a live winner:

Offline draw

Entrants see only the announcement
No record of how the pick happened, unless you publish one
Quicker when nobody is watching

Offline still has its place. A daily or weekly prize drawn while the campaign runs rarely needs an audience, and you can draw those from the Winners tab at any time (see Drawing Random Winners).

If you draw live from the Winners tab, switch on Hide Winners first. Gleam blurs winner names, emails and locations as they are drawn, so you can draw on stream without showing an entrant's details to everyone watching.