Scottish Premiership side St Mirren FC has launched the St Mirren Academy Lottery to help raise funds for its youth development pathway.
The lottery will be delivered in partnership with Our Club Lotto, the UK’s leading sports lottery platform, and also gives supporters the opportunity to win substantial prizes.
Players of the St Mirren Academy Lottery will pick four numbers between 1-25 for the chance to win a £1,000 starting jackpot.
Entries are £1 and the jackpot will roll over by £100 every week until won, up to a maximum of £20,000.
Football club lotteries are not uncommon in the UK. Clubs such as Wolves, Portsmouth and Burnley all run similar initiatives to fund the wider organisation.
Funds raised will directly benefit St Mirren’s next generation of players, providing coaching, facilities and development opportunities for the side’s youth team.
It comes as the club prepares for another season of football in Scotland’s top division, having retained their status via the relegation play-off against Partick Thistle.
St Mirren also came out as unlikely winners in the Scottish League Cup, having beaten eventual league champions Celtic 3-1 in the final back in December 2025.
Next season will mark the club’s ninth consecutive one in the Scottish Premiership, and this initiative will look to ensure that the club is building towards a stable future as a mainstay in the top flight.
Lottery to prove a shrewd signing for St Mirren?
The lottery may also be a relatively clever way to gain engagement too, with societal lotteries and the National Lottery in the UK still garnering huge attention.
This was exemplified by The Postcode Lottery revealing last month that it had achieved a record breaking UK performance, with 5.2 million subscribers and its strongest-ever sales.
Meanwhile, despite UK National Lottery operator Allwyn seeing its UK gross gaming revenue drop slightly from £860m to £817m, it is preparing to modernise the lottery completely.
While the St Mirren Academy Lottery will likely account for a small percentage of the club’s income, it may prove a shrewd way to raise funds for a youth academy which has in the past developed players such as Scotland star John McGinn and Norwich City captain Kenny McLean.