Raffle Rules for UK Clubs: When You Need a Licence and When You Don't

If your club sells raffle or draw tickets outside a single event — online, on social media, across a whole season — you almost certainly need to be registered as a small society lottery with your local council. If you sell and draw tickets entirely within one event on one day, you usually don't. That distinction catches out more UK clubs than anything else, because the moment a raffle moves online it stops being the informal thing everyone assumes it is. The simplest fix is a compliant platform that handles the rules, ticketing and payments for you — Play Fund Win is built for exactly that, there's nothing to pay up front, and a club can be live in about ten minutes.

First, a bit of language

"Raffle" isn't a legal term. In law, a raffle, a tombola, a 50/50 draw and a club lottery are all lotteries under the Gambling Act 2005, covering England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has separate legislation, so NI clubs should check locally.

Lotteries are regulated because people pay to enter and prizes are allocated by chance. The good news is that the law makes deliberate room for community fundraising — several categories exist that clubs can use without going near a Gambling Commission operating licence.

The raffles you can run without registering

• Incidental lotteries. The classic fete, fun day or presentation-night raffle. Tickets must be sold and drawn during the event itself, at a non-commercial event. Caps apply to running costs and to prizes bought with proceeds (donated prizes don't count), and no rollover is allowed. No registration needed.
• Private society lotteries. Tickets sold only to members of your club, or to people on the club's premises. Useful for a members-only draw, but you can't promote it to the wider public — which rules out most social media selling.
• Free prize draws. If there's a genuine free entry route that's as easy to use as the paid one, it isn't a lottery at all. Get this wrong and you're running an unlicensed lottery, so take advice before relying on it.

The one most clubs actually need: a small society lottery

If you want to sell tickets in advance, online, or run the same draw month after month, this is your route. You register your club or charity with the licensing authority at your local council, pay a modest fee and renew annually. It's a form, not an ordeal.

The main conditions to plan around:

• Your society must be non-commercial — set up for charitable, sporting, athletic or other non-profit purposes. A club run for private gain doesn't qualify.
• At least 20% of the proceeds must go to the purposes of the society. Most clubs are comfortably above this.
• All tickets must be the same price, with a statutory cap on that price.
• Limits apply to the proceeds of a single draw and to your total draw proceeds across a calendar year. Exceed them and you need a Gambling Commission large society lottery licence instead.
• Tickets must carry set information — the promoting society, the ticket price, the draw date and the person responsible.
• You must send a return to the council after each draw showing what was raised, what went on prizes and expenses, and what went to the cause.

The exact price cap, proceeds limits and fees are set in regulations and change from time to time, so check the current figures with the Gambling Commission or your council before printing anything.

The rules people forget

• Age limits. There's a statutory minimum age for buying lottery tickets and it's your job to enforce it. Play Fund Win draws run on an 18+ basis, and any decent platform checks age at entry rather than leaving it to a volunteer on the gate.
• Be honest about the money. Don't say "all proceeds go to the club" if prizes and fees come out first. State the split plainly.
• Keep payments clean. Selling tickets through someone's personal payment app is an accounting problem waiting to happen. Money should land in the club account with a record behind it.
• Draw fairly and openly. Use a verifiable random method, publish the result and pay winners promptly. Trust is the whole asset here.
• Don't market to under-18s. Aim it at the adult supporter base, not the junior section's group chat.

How to decide in two minutes

Are tickets sold and drawn on the same day at one event? You're likely fine as an incidental lottery. Sold only to members? A private society lottery may cover you. Anything else — online sales, advance sales, public promotion, a recurring monthly draw — and you should register with your council, or use a platform that operates the draw under its own licence.

That last option is why most clubs end up on a platform. Registering yourself is perfectly doable, but you then own the ticket wording, age checks, payments, record-keeping and returns.

Get the compliance right and the fundraising follows

None of this is a reason to avoid running a draw. Raffles and 50/50 draws are among the most reliable fundraisers in UK grassroots sport precisely because they're cheap to run, easy to share and genuinely good fun. You just need to stay the right side of a sensible set of rules, and be straight with supporters about where their money goes.

If you'd rather not manage registration, ticketing and age checks yourself, Play Fund Win runs compliant digital 50/50 draws, raffles and club lotteries for UK clubs and charities. Your club keeps its share of every ticket sold, there's nothing to pay up front, and you can be live in about ten minutes. Take a look at playfundwin.com to get started.