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.
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 clicks “Host room”, picks a display name, and the wheel becomes a live room with a shareable code.
Why use this tool
- The host runs the draw; guests cannot trigger a spin, and that is enforced on the server
- Draw several winners in one go (three prizes, five presenters) each pick its own checkable spin
- Let entrants add themselves: with one switch, everyone who joins is put on the wheel by name
- Remove the winner after each spin so everyone gets exactly one turn
- Promote a co-host beforehand and the draw survives your laptop dying mid-event
- Emoji reactions float over the wheel on every screen, with the sender's name
- 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 edit the wheel, change the settings, lock the room, end it or promote anyone. 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. With the host's Participants join the wheel setting on, taking part also puts your name on the wheel; the door says which of the two it means in this room.
Co-hosts sit in between. A host can promote a participant, and that person can then run the draw, stop a spin, lock, unlock and remove people, but still cannot change what the wheel is drawn over, end the room, or promote anyone else. That last limit matters: a co-host who could promote could turn the whole audience into co-hosts. The first power is the hand-off: promote a co-host before the event and a dead laptop does not end the draw.
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 results panel groups draws into rounds, so a three-winner draw reads as one round, and the winners can be copied as a list or exported as a CSV per round or all at once.
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, or turn on Participants join the wheel and let the entrants fill it as they arrive. Either way, give the room a clear answer to 'What's this wheel for?' when you host it: that line is the first thing every guest reads on the invite.
Promote a co-host before you start. It takes one tap in the participants list, and it is the difference between a dropped connection being a pause and being the end of the event.
For several prizes, set the number of winners before you spin rather than spinning and removing by hand. The room leaves each winner out of the next pick, records every spin, and shows everyone the full list at the end.
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
- Open a draw room. Click Host room on the wheel. 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. It opens on a page that names you as the host and says what the draw is for; guests pick a name and choose whether they are taking part or just watching. Turn on Participants join the wheel first if you want every entrant added by name as they arrive.
- Name a co-host. In the participants list, press Make co-host next to someone you trust. If your device drops out, they can keep spinning from theirs.
- 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. Choose how many winners the draw should pick, then click the wheel. Every screen animates to the same slice and stops on the same name; for several winners the wheel runs once per pick, leaving out anyone who has already won.
- Keep the record. Copy the winners, export them as a CSV, or filter the results by round. The event log 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, or a co-host the host has promoted, 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.
- Can I draw more than one winner at a time?
- Yes. Pick a number of winners before you spin (up to ten, and never more than the wheel can host) and the room runs one spin per winner, leaving out anyone who has already won. Each spin is recorded and checkable on its own, and everyone sees the full list at the end. Starting a normal spin part-way through abandons the run and says so in the log, so a partial list is never shown as the winners.
- Can people add themselves to the wheel?
- Yes, if you turn on Participants join the wheel in the room settings. From then on everyone who joins as a participant is added by name, on the server, the moment they join; spectators are not. Names are never doubled, a display name cannot sneak in a weight, and removing someone from the room takes their name off again. You can still edit the wheel by hand at any time.
- What happens if the host's laptop dies mid-event?
- If you promoted a co-host beforehand, they carry on: a co-host can spin and stop the wheel from their own device, and can moderate the room, but cannot change the wheel or settings, end the room or promote anyone. Do it before the event starts: promoting needs the host.
- 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?
- Watching and joining are free for everyone, with no account and no install. Hosting a room is free; the event capabilities on this page (several winners at once, co-hosts, moderation) come with Premium.
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