Tocara - tocaran?

Question

1st table of examples.  Why do you use 'tocara' in the third sentence when referring to 'they'?  Should it not be 'tocaran'?

Accepted Answer

Hola Huw
In this sentence:

Sería genial que les tocara el premio.
It would be great if they won the prize.

we are using an idiom "tocar algo a alguien" that is used to express when someone wins something (a prize, the lottery...) and it works this way; the prize/lottery "touches" someone. Obviously the word "touch" is idiomatic, not literal, but this is how we express it. In this case, the subject of the sentence is "what the person wins", not the person. 
Sería genial que "el premio" les tocara. (lit: it'd be great that the prize touched them)
So, the person/people who receive the prize is expressed with an indirect object pronoun, in this case "les".
Here are other similar questions:

¡A Javier le ha tocado la loteria!
Javier won the lottery!
Me han tocado 300 mil euros!
I won 300 thousand euros!

See how in the second example the verb is "han tocado", agreeing with the subject that is plural (300 mil euros).
I hope this clarifies it for you.
Un saludo
Inma