How to run the office Melbourne Cup sweep

Happy Melbourne Cup day, everyone! Don’t we all wish we lived in Melbourne and didn’t have to go to work today?

At my office we’re getting right into the spirit of things – we’re having a long lunch with our own version of “fashions on the field” and cheese, crackers and bubbly for the race itself. We’ll huddle around the only TV in our office (in the boardroom, no less!) and cheer on our picks from the office sweeps.

I’m lucky that I work with some horseracing fans – I hand over sweeps duties over to the experts. But I thought it would be handy to get a grip on how sweeps actually work (just in case anyone chucks a sickie!). I found this handy overview from Sweep Forms:

A sweep is when a number of people pay to purchase a coupon, each representing a horse. The tickets are given out randomly, and each coupon costs the same (usually $1 – $5), so there is no skill element involved, and odds are ignored completely. The prize pool is made up of the receipts exclusively, and is divided out to the holders of the tickets for winning horses.

Typically, first place will win about half of the prize pool, with the remainder divided on a sliding scale to second and third. There may even be some money given to last place, considering the random nature of a sweep.

I found that The Age has the best template for sweeps this year – click here to download the PDF and you’re on your way! You’ll find that pretty much every newspaper will have a sweeps form, though.

Just quietly though, I think it’s well worth nabbing the accounts team members and ask them to run the sweep – they’re much better at bean-counting than I would be, that’s for sure!

Have you got anything special planned at work for the Melbourne Cup?