Built-in compliance: what UK Gambling Commission rules actually require

If your club or charity runs a raffle, lottery, 50/50 or prize draw in the UK, you're operating inside a perimeter set by the Gambling Act and watched by the Gambling Commission. Most volunteers don't need to become experts — but someone at your club needs to know which side of each line you're standing on. Here are the rules in plain English. (This is general information, not legal advice — for edge cases, check the Gambling Commission's guidance or take advice.)

The three lanes

Lotteries and raffles. Pay to enter, prize decided wholly by chance — that's a lottery in law, and a raffle is simply a lottery by another name. Lotteries can only be run for good causes, never for private or commercial gain, and which rules apply depends on the type: small lotteries incidental to an event (like a raffle drawn at the club dinner), private society lotteries, registered small society lotteries (registration with your local authority), and licensed society lotteries above those limits (Gambling Commission licence). Get the category right and the paperwork is light; get it wrong and you're running an illegal lottery without meaning to.

Prize competitions. If winning genuinely depends on skill, judgement or knowledge — a question hard enough to deter a real proportion of entrants — it's a competition, not a lottery, and sits outside licensing. The test is substance over label: calling something a competition doesn't make it one.

Free draws. If there's a genuinely free route to enter with equal chance of winning — and it's properly publicised — a draw can fall outside the licensing regime too. "Genuinely free" is doing the heavy lifting: the free route has to be real, accessible and not buried.

What you must get right regardless of lane

Age restrictions — 16+ for society lotteries, 18+ where required, actually verified rather than assumed. Clear terms — entry rules, closing date, how and when the draw happens, how winners are notified. A fair, auditable draw — provably random, recorded, repeatable if challenged. Money handling — proceeds traceable, the good-cause share transparent. And records — who entered, who won, what was paid out, kept properly.

What your platform should handle for you

This is the honest argument for running regulated mechanics through a proper platform rather than a bucket and a book of cloakroom tickets: age verification at entry, terms generated and displayed, draws executed randomly with an audit trail, winner notification handled, and every record kept automatically. Compliance stops being a job a volunteer has to remember and becomes something the system does by default. It's a core reason the operating-system model beats point solutions — one compliance layer across every mechanic you run.

That's how Play Fund Win has helped 2,500+ organisations raise £1M+ — with the regulatory plumbing built in, not bolted on.

Run your next draw with the rules handled: start fundraising with Play Fund Win.