The Scripps Networks' annual home giveaways are eagerly anticipated by millions of people. People who want to win a beautifully built new home race to enter the HGTV® Dream Home Sweepstakes.
What is the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway®?
HGTV® (originally an initialism for Home & Garden Television) is a Discovery, Inc.-owned American pay television channel. Since 1997, the Scripps Network's Home and Garden Television channel has been conducting an annual sweepstakes called the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway®. Every year, HGTV® airs a series of HGTV® Dream Home television specials in which their experts showcase a stunning new home they've created and then give it away.
Read on to find out how Scripps Network selects the winner's name from over 100 million entries.
Assign bin numbers to all entries.
When the entries arrive, they are sorted into batches based on the order in which they arrived. After that, the batches are separated into bins, each of which is assigned a number. Usually, a bin would have between 26000 and 50000 entries. Physical and online entries are placed in the same bins; mail-in entries are placed in physical bins, and virtual entries are placed in virtual bins. Virtual bins are just a collection of online entries.
Draw a bin number from a hopper.
The potential winners are narrowed down in this process by selecting the lucky bin from which the final winner will be drawn. It works in a similar way to the lottery draws you might have seen on TV. The bin numbers are written on ping pong balls, which are then placed in a hopper. The hopper then selects a ball at random, and the winning bin is determined by the number of that ball. As a result, only the entries in the winning bin will be eligible for the next round.
Picking the winning submission from the lucky bin
The next step is determined by whether the chosen bin number belongs to a physical or virtual bin.
If the bin is physical, HGTV® or Ritway workers will empty it on the floor. After that, one employee is blindfolded and sent to a pile of envelopes to choose one at random. The winning entry is the selected envelope.
If the selected bin is a virtual one, a computer program is used to cycle through all of the names. The names are difficult to read because the spinning is too fast. One employee will be asked to choose the winner by clicking the spacebar. The cycling stops at a random name, and the lucky winner is selected in this manner.
The content of this article is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon since it is subject to change.
All third-party names (including company and service names), graphics, and logos used here are trademarks or registered trademarks of such third parties. Use of them here does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by such third parties.
