Instant Scratchies are a fun ‘instant win’ scratch style game from NSW Lotteries.  Unlike traditional lottery style games, players do not have to pick numbers, or wait for a draw to be conducted to see if they have won a prize. They simply scratch to find out their ticket outcome instantly!

Instant Scratchies were first introduced to Australia on 15 November 1982 as a replacement for the $1 Draw Lottery.

The very first Instant Scratchies game in NSW was called “Harbour Bridge” and cost just $1 to play. The top prize was $50,000.

Over the years Instant Scratchies added different style games at different price points to the portfolio of games to meet demand in the NSW market. Today there are five different price points (i.e. $1, $2, $3, $5 and $10) offering a variety of different styles of games including standard games, Game Play and Win for Life.

In late 2006 changes were made to the prize structures of Instant Scratchies games. The most important change was the increase in prize payouts with the overall payout across all games increasing from 63.4% to 65.7%.  This significant increase to payouts improved the value of prizes to players. To further heighten the winning experience the number of prizes from $10 to $100 in each game has been increased.

Instant Scratchies games are changed frequently to keep players interested in the product and to increase their enjoyment. Each year over forty-five new Instant Scratchies games enter the market at various price levels offering players the opportunity to win top prizes from $20,000 to $250,000 or the Win for Life game, which offers a top prize of over $1 million paid in regular instalments.

Instant Scratchies are a unique form of instant lottery where the prizes are all determined at the time of printing.

NSW Lotteries prints all Instant Scratchies games at a secure facility in Sydney using some of the most advanced printing processes in the world. When games leave the production line they are already sealed with latex and neither NSW Lotteries, the printers nor our agents are able to determine which tickets are winners.

Tickets for a particular game are printed in “pools” with an identical prize structure for each pool.  The majority of games have multiple pools ranging from one to four.  The pools are broken in “books” of tickets that are randomly distributed to the NSW Lotteries retail network of around 1,600 agents.

Games on sale are constantly replenished with new “books” of tickets from different pools. This means that the top prize in a game may still be available, even after one of the top prizes has already been won.

Because of the secure nature of the game and the random distribution of tickets, there is no way of knowing exactly what prizes are still available to be won.  In additional, winning tickets may have been purchased but not yet claimed.