How to Run a Last Man Standing Fundraiser for Your Club (UK Guide)

A Last Man Standing competition is one of the simplest ways for a UK grassroots club to turn the football season into a steady stream of fundraising income: members pay a one-off entry fee, pick one team to win each week, and can't pick the same team twice. Get it wrong and you're out. The last entrant standing takes a share of the pot, and the club keeps the rest. It's cheap to run and it keeps people talking for weeks. The catch is the rules — a prediction competition sits in a genuinely grey part of UK gambling law, so if you want the same stickiness with none of the uncertainty, running a digital 50/50 draw alongside it through a compliant platform like Play Fund Win is the simplest route. It's free to set up and live in about ten minutes.

How Last Man Standing actually works

The format is the same everywhere, which is part of why it spreads:

• Entry: everyone pays a fixed fee to join — most clubs pitch this low enough that parents, players and the pub crowd all say yes.
• The pick: each round, every entrant picks one team they think will win. Draws count as a loss in most versions.
• No repeats: you can only use each team once for the whole competition. That's what makes it interesting — you can't just pick the league leaders every week.
• Elimination: get it wrong and you're out. Rounds continue until one entrant remains.
• The split: the club announces up front how the pot is divided — typically a share to the winner and the rest to club funds.

If everyone is eliminated in the same round, have a rule ready: roll the pot into next season, split it between the last group standing, or restart with the survivors reinstated. Decide before you start, not after.

The legal bit — read this before you take a penny

This is where a lot of clubs assume they're fine because "everyone does it". Under the Gambling Act 2005, how your competition is treated depends on its structure:

• A prize competition — where success depends on skill, knowledge or judgement to a degree that deters a significant proportion of people from entering, or prevents a significant proportion from winning — generally falls outside gambling regulation.
• A free draw — where there is a genuinely free and equally prominent route to enter — is also outside the regime.
• Pool betting — where stakes are pooled and paid out on the outcome of sporting events — does require a licence, and this is the risk with football prediction competitions.

Whether a particular Last Man Standing competition counts as a skill-based competition or as pool betting depends on how it's run, and it is not a settled, one-size-fits-all answer. That's an honest "check it", not a scare story. Before you launch, read the Gambling Commission's guidance on prize competitions and free draws, and if there's any real money involved or any doubt, take proper advice or speak to your county FA or national governing body. Some clubs sidestep the question entirely by running it as a free-entry competition with voluntary donations alongside — but a free route has to be genuinely free and just as easy to use, not buried in the small print.

Whatever route you take, the basics still apply: 18+ only for anything with a paid entry and a prize, describe clearly where the money goes, and never imply the club is a registered charity if it isn't.

Running it well: the practical bits

Time it with the season. Launch alongside a new league season, a cup run or the January restart. Fixture congestion and international breaks will wreck a badly timed competition, so check the calendar first.

Write the rules on one page. Which league you're using, the deadline for picks, what happens with postponements, whether a draw eliminates you, and how the pot splits. Publish it once, link to it every week.

Set a hard deadline. Picks close before the first kick-off of the round. No exceptions, no late texts — one bent rule and the whole thing loses credibility.

Kill the spreadsheet where you can. Collecting cash and chasing picks over WhatsApp is how volunteers burn out. Take payments online, keep one shared results table, send one weekly update.

Make the weekly update the fundraiser. The "who's still in" message is the most-read thing your club will publish all week. Put a link to your draw or donation page at the bottom of it every single time.

Where a 50/50 draw fits alongside it

Last Man Standing is brilliant at engagement but finite — it ends when someone wins, and the pot is capped by entries. A 50/50 draw runs continuously, needs no fixtures, and isn't limited to people who follow football. Half the pot goes to one winner, half to the club, and because the prize scales with ticket sales, supporters can see exactly what their money is doing.

The strongest approach for most clubs is both: use the elimination competition to build a weekly audience, and point that audience at a draw that runs all year. One keeps people talking, the other keeps the income steady.

Ready to set one up?

If you'd rather spend your evenings coaching than reconciling entry fees, Play Fund Win handles the payments, ticketing and compliance for digital 50/50 draws, raffles and club lotteries — your club keeps the majority of what's raised, it's free to set up, and you can be live in around ten minutes. Take a look at playfundwin.com.