Live Draw Room: Run a Draw With an Audience Watching
A live draw room is a shared page where one person runs a wheel draw and everyone else watches it happen on their own screen. The host spins; every guest sees the same wheel land on the same name at the same moment. Nobody has to share a screen, install anything, or make an account.
Sample entries: Prize draw
Ada L. Grace H. Katherine J. Dorothy V. Mary J. Annie E. Evelyn B. Frances S.
Copy these into the Entries tab on the main wheel.
How to create a room & how others join
Your display name
The wheel becomes a live room →
Step 1 of 4
Host clicks “⚡ Host room”
On the main wheel, the host chooses “Simple Room”, picks a display name, and the wheel becomes a live room with a 6-character code.
Why use this wheel
- Host-only spinning — nobody else can trigger the draw
- Spectator mode: watch without being counted as taking part
- Lock the room once entries close, so nobody slips in late
- Remove a participant, with the removal written into the log
- Every join, edit, spin and result recorded with a UTC timestamp
- Reconnects on its own when a phone drops off Wi-Fi mid-draw
- The winner is chosen on the server, not in anyone's browser
- No accounts, no install, works on any modern phone or laptop
Common uses
- Prize draws for an online community. Paste the entry list, drop the invite link in your Discord or Slack, and lock the room when entries close. Members watch the wheel from their own device and see the winner at the same instant you do.
- Raffles at a live event. Put the wheel on the projector and share the room link with the audience so people at the back can follow along on their phones. The event log gives you the full list of draws afterwards.
- Hybrid classrooms. Students in the room and students at home watch the same wheel. Spectator mode lets observers — a teaching assistant, a parent, a visiting colleague — join without being counted in the class total.
- Stream giveaways. Viewers open the room and watch the draw directly, independent of stream delay, so nobody argues that the result changed between the wheel and the broadcast.
In-depth guide
What makes a draw room different from screen sharing
The usual way to run a draw for a remote audience is to share your screen. It works, but it puts everything on your connection: your video quality decides whether anyone can read the names, your frame rate decides how the wheel looks, and your lag decides when people see the result.
A draw room sends the state of the draw rather than a picture of it. Each person's own browser draws the wheel, so it is sharp on their screen whatever your upload speed is doing, and it stops exactly where everyone else's stops because the outcome was decided once, on the server, before any of them started animating.
It also removes the thing that makes screen-shared draws feel unconvincing: the audience is watching your window, and they have to take your word for what happened in it. In a room, everyone has the same page, the same log and the same result.
Who can do what in a room
One person is the host — whoever opened the room. Only the host can spin, edit the wheel, change the settings, lock the room or end it. Those permissions are checked on the server every time, so hiding a button is not what keeps them safe.
Everyone else joins as a participant or a spectator, chosen at the door. The difference is how you are listed and counted: participants are in the room total, spectators are shown separately. Neither can spin.
Moderators sit in between. A host can promote a participant, and that person can then lock, unlock and remove people, but still cannot start a draw or promote anyone else. That last limit matters — a moderator who could promote could turn the whole audience into moderators.
Why the record matters more than it sounds
Most draws never need to be defended. The ones that do, need it badly: a prize with real value, a placement people wanted, a decision somebody disagrees with. In those moments the question is never whether the wheel is random — it is whether anything changed between the entries closing and the winner being announced.
The event log answers that. Entries were edited at 14:02, the room was locked at 14:07, the spin ran at 14:09, the winner was Grace. Each line is timestamped in UTC, so it reads the same for everyone regardless of where they are. Nothing in the log can be edited or removed afterwards.
The draw itself is checkable too. Each spin publishes the fingerprint of a random seed before the wheel moves and reveals the seed when it stops, so anyone who was watching can confirm afterwards that the result was fixed in advance rather than picked once it was clear who was going to win.
Running a draw when the connection is not perfect
Live draws happen in the places where Wi-Fi is worst: school halls, conference rooms, community centres, someone's kitchen. A room is built for that rather than around it.
If a connection drops, the page retries on a widening delay with a little randomness in it, so thirty phones on the same overloaded access point do not all reconnect at the same instant and knock it over again. When it comes back, it fetches the current state from the server instead of trusting whatever it had cached.
Rejoining reuses your existing identity, so you come back as the same person rather than appearing twice in the list. And because the outcome lives on the server, someone who missed the animation entirely still sees the right winner.
Tips for running a good live draw
Paste the entries before you share the link. People arriving to a finished wheel understand what they are looking at; people arriving to an empty one start asking questions in chat.
Lock the room out loud. Saying 'entries are closed, locking the room now' and doing it in the same breath is the clearest possible signal, and the log records the moment.
Give the audience the link rather than a video of the wheel. It is the difference between watching your screen and watching the draw.
Export the results before the room expires. A CSV of the winners takes one click and settles most questions before they are asked.
If you have to re-run a draw, say why. The room records the cancellation either way — explaining it costs nothing and going quiet costs trust.
How to use live draw room: run a draw with an audience watching
- Open a draw room. Click Host room on the wheel and choose Advanced Room. You get an 8-character code and an invite link.
- Add the entries. Open Edit wheel and paste your names. Everyone in the room sees the wheel update as you type.
- Share the link. Send the invite link. Guests pick a name and choose whether they are taking part or just watching.
- Lock the room. Once entries are closed, lock the room from the Moderation panel. New people can no longer join; anyone already in — including someone whose connection dropped — can still get back.
- Spin. Click the wheel. Every screen animates to the same slice and stops on the same name.
- Keep the record. Export the results as a CSV, or read the event log, which lists every join, edit and draw with a UTC timestamp.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a live draw room?
- A live draw room is a web page where one person runs a wheel draw and an audience watches it in real time on their own devices. The host controls the wheel; everyone else sees the same animation and the same result without screen sharing.
- Can guests spin the wheel?
- No. Only the host can start a draw. That is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the interface, so a guest cannot trigger a spin by editing the page or sending their own request.
- How do I stop people joining after entries close?
- Lock the room from the Moderation panel. Locking blocks new participants but still readmits anyone already in the room, so a guest whose phone dropped off Wi-Fi is not shut out of a draw they had already joined.
- What is spectator mode?
- Spectators watch the wheel, the spins, the results and the event log, but are listed separately and left out of the participant total. You choose when you join, and the choice cannot be changed afterwards by the browser.
- What happens if my connection drops mid-draw?
- The room reconnects on its own, retrying with a widening delay, and then resynchronises with the server rather than trusting whatever it had cached. You rejoin as the same person, not as a duplicate, and the connection status is shown on screen throughout.
- Who decides the winner?
- The server does, before the wheel starts moving. It commits to a random seed, publishes the fingerprint of that seed, and reveals the seed when the draw finishes — so the result cannot have been changed while the wheel was turning, and no browser in the room chooses or predicts it.
- Is there a record of the draw afterwards?
- Yes. Every room keeps an event log — room created, participants joined or removed, wheel edited, room locked, spin started, winner selected — each with a UTC timestamp. The log is append-only: nothing in it can be edited or deleted, including by the host.
- Can the host cancel a spin they do not like?
- A host can stop a spin, but never quietly. A cancelled draw stays in the results marked Cancelled, shows the result that was discarded, and is written into the event log — so a re-run is always visible to everyone who was watching.
- How long does a room last?
- 24 hours by default, and the clock restarts on every action, so an active room does not expire under you. A host can shorten it to 2 or 12 hours, or set the room never to expire.
- Is it free?
- Yes. There is no account, no payment and no install. Open a room, share the link, run the draw.
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