[Phemist]

Not surprising. Brits loooove lotteries. On every scale. My year abroad in the UK, in every social event I attended organized by a student society there would inevitably be left-over budget, which would be taken care of by.. a raffle. Some of these raffles could take 30 min (on an event that lasted ~3 hours). And people would be incredibly excited about it.. Really boggles my mind

[dofm]

I would be wary of generalising from British student society culture to wider British culture.

But we would (IMO correctly) observe that while raffles and lotteries are both technically a form of gambling, a raffle is not really a lottery in the conventional sense; it tends to form a more specific social function because there's usually an array of cheap, fun, often slightly absurd prizes from local donors, the prize is not money or a truly high-value thing, they aren't rolling, weekly events, they tend to be all-ages etc.

It largely emerges out of British church fête culture. British churches are usually poor, not rich, so a raffle was a way for the vicar to gently shake down local businesses for a set of cheap prizes in return for some gentle advertising and showing off, and a way to get more local small donors and word-of-mouth because you're gently socially shamed into taking and distributing a book of raffle tickets. School communities do it — for much the same reason — just substitute head teacher for vicar.

Also the raffle is at the end of the event, so people stay to the end (when Britishness would otherwise see us leaving early)!

You have to understand that the naffness of a raffle is very distinct from the brassy, brash idea of a lottery. People groan at the naffness and then take part anyway because it's harmless. Raffles are crap, but they are community crap.

(Like the old-fashioned "Beetle drive" fundraiser which is essentially a form of bingo.)

You can't really draw a line from the typical social raffle to lottery participation or gambling. Lotteries, raffles, bingo halls, sports betting, online game gambling, all look superficially similar but they aren't (despite the gambling companies' efforts) really the same constituencies.

Apart from that, I don't think we're any different to the USA or European countries; we got our National Lottery tradition from the USA and some of our smaller prize lottery companies have been European.

[Phemist]

Thank you for the additional background! For me as a foreigner coming into the raffle culture, I have no such community associations with the raffles and consider the "naffness" rather more obnoxious. Once I found out that it basically was a staple at these social events, I would act British and leave early ;). That it is related to Church Fete makes the conversative party <-> lottery link all the less surprising!

[dofm]

We do have a rather unusual relationship with naffness in this country! It's very difficult to explain :-)

New Zealand also has the same sort of church/community raffle culture, I gather; very much an export.

The Conservatives did start the National Lottery in the 90s and it definitely tried to hang off the "good causes" thing, but as I detailed in another overlong comment, much of the UK's more disturbing gambling trends were caused by subsequent deregulations enacted by the subsequent (New) Labour government.

[Phemist]

It also explains the UK representatives for Eurovision in the last.. say 25 years (except Sam Rider in 2022). I've wondered if e.g. this year's very very naff send-in (Eins, Zwei, Drei (although, that was not an R)) was a deliberate attempt at an FU to the eurovision, or rather a genuine attempt that would speak to the populace. I'm leaning towards the latter now.

[dofm]

Not a deliberate FU, for sure. Sam Battle simply would not do that. I thought it was both fun and funny. But it was earnest and playful at the same time.

For us Eurovision is simply not something that registers as a serious thing; the years where it has been non-cheesy are few and far between. As a nation we find much (non-scandinavian, at least) Europop quite cheesy, with only a couple of exceptions.

Winning it earnestly is not something that happens when we try, and perhaps will not ever happen again. Europeans simply don't like us enough!

The last time we won was a rare moment in our recent history; literally two days before, a Europhile left-wing government led by a prime minister who spoke French fluently and counted a legendary flamenco guitarist as his friend had just won a landslide, and we entered a band that had already been famous with a pretty basic, stadium rock song. So it was a combination of happenstance and European proxy politics again.

So we enter fun things that better express how we feel about it. Europop often comes across as cheesy but the LMNC entry was out of love for it, not loathing.

We would, TBH, rather win it for something fun like this than win it for something serious. And I think Ireland shows you what happens if you train the big guns on the thing; repeatedly winning Eurovision nearly bankrupted RTÉ, as far as I recall.

FWIW my feeling is that we should quit Eurovision (if the EBU do not end it). Its time has past and it will not survive its current form.