Raffle rules UK: what a pub can legally run, from the charity raffle to the Friday meat raffle

The raffle rules in the UK come from the Gambling Act 2005. A pub can run a raffle at an event without any licence as long as the money goes to a good cause rather than the pub, tickets are only sold at the event while it's on, no more than £100 comes off for expenses and no more than £500 goes on bought prizes. There's no rollover, ever.

That covers the Christmas charity raffle. What it doesn't cover is the raffle a lot of pubs and clubs actually run every week: the Friday meat raffle, the hamper draw, the "pound a ticket, winner on Sunday". Those can't be fundraisers for the pub. But there's a separate set of rules, almost nobody in the trade talks about, that lets a pub run its own small weekly draw for customers legally. It's called a customer lottery, and it's below.

The types of raffle a pub can run, at a glance

Type	Who, and for what	Main limits
Raffle at an event (incidental lottery)	Anyone, at a one-off event, for charity or a good cause	£100 expenses, £500 bought prizes, tickets sold only at the event, no rollover. No licence.
Customer lottery	A business, for its customers on the premises	No profit, no prize over £50, one draw a week, paper tickets, 16 and over. No licence.
Private society lottery	A club or society, for its members	Members only, for the society or a good cause, no rollover. No licence.
Work lottery	Staff at the same premises	No profit, or for a good cause. No licence.
Small society lottery	A non-commercial society, sold to the public	Prizes and expenses up to 80% of sales. Register with the council, £40 then £20 a year.

A pub as a business can only really use the first two. The landlord's darts team, a supporters' club or a working men's club can use the society ones. Let's take them in turn.

1. The charity raffle at an event

The Gambling Commission calls this an incidental lottery. It has to happen alongside an event, and since 2016 that event can be commercial or non-commercial, so a raffle at your quiz night or a race night is fine. What can't change is where the money goes. The law says it "must be promoted wholly for a purpose other than that of private gain", and the Commission puts it as charity or another good cause. So the hospice, the local junior football team, a customer's family who've had a rough year. Not your till, not the staff Christmas do.

The other rules are short:

• Up to £100 can come out of the ticket money for expenses, like printing tickets.
• Up to £500 can come out to buy prizes. Donated prizes don't count towards that, so a donated hamper worth £800 is fine.
• Tickets can only be sold at the event and while it's happening. Selling tickets over the bar all week for a draw at Saturday's party isn't allowed.
• No rollover. If nobody claims a prize, it doesn't carry to the next raffle.
• The Commission says you can sell tickets for an incidental lottery to children.

A worked example. You sell 400 tickets at £1 on a charity quiz night. You spent £20 on tickets and £180 on a meat hamper and two bottles of wine, and a local butcher donated a turkey. The charity gets £400 minus £200, so £200. The turkey doesn't count towards the £500.

2. The customer lottery: the legal home for the meat raffle

This is the one I'd want every licensee to know about. Schedule 11 of the Gambling Act lets a business run a lottery for its customers, on its own premises, with no licence. Pubs aren't excluded. (The Commission says customer lotteries can't be run on premises with a Gambling Act premises licence, which is a betting shop or a casino, not a pub with a gaming machine permit.)

The conditions, from Part 3 of Schedule 11 and the Commission's guidance:

• It must be organised so that no profit is made. Every penny of ticket money goes on prizes and the cost of running it.
• No ticket can win more than £50, in cash or goods.
• Tickets can only be sold to people while they're on the premises as your customers.
• A draw can't take place within seven days of a previous customer lottery draw on the same premises. So weekly at most.
• No rollover.
• Every ticket has to be a physical document showing your name and address, who can buy one, and that tickets can't be transferred. Every ticket costs the same and the price is on it.
• You can only advertise it on the premises.
• The Commission says tickets can only be sold to customers aged 16 and over.

So a Friday meat raffle can be completely legal, as long as it's once a week, no tray is worth more than £50 and the pub doesn't keep a penny. You can't use one to raise money for charity either. The Commission says customer lotteries "cannot use them for fundraising". For that, run an incidental lottery at an event instead.

Why bother if the pub can't make money from it?

Because the raffle was never the profit. The people who stay for the draw are. Say 100 tickets at £1 go on three meat trays (£35, £35 and £25) and £5 of printed tickets. The pub makes nothing on the raffle. If it keeps 30 people in for one more drink each at £2.45 gross profit a pint, that's £73.50 of gross profit on a night that might otherwise have emptied at nine. Do it every Friday and it's about £3,800 a year. Those are my numbers to show the idea, not a promise. Count your own Friday tills before and after and you'll know.

Make the draw time fixed and late enough to matter. Put it on the TVs if you have screens. If the draw is at 9.30, people plan their night round it.

3. Club and society raffles

Working men's clubs, social clubs, golf club bars and supporters' clubs often run raffles for members. That's a private society lottery: tickets can only be sold to members, it can raise money for the society itself or a good cause, and the society can't have been set up for gambling. Again, no rollovers. If the club wants to sell tickets to the public, it's into small society lottery territory, which means registering with the council. The Commission gives the fee as £40, then £20 a year to renew, and prizes and expenses together can be up to 80% of ticket sales.

For clubs, the raffle money is also stock-control territory. Committees often can't see where cash leaks, and a raffle float handled from the bar till is one of the easiest places for it to go missing. Keep the raffle cash separate from the bar takings, count it in front of two people, and record it. The club stock control guide covers the committee side.

The rollover trap: "find the joker" and similar games

Here's the part I'd check carefully. Every exempt type of lottery above bans rollovers. A game where people buy a ticket or a card, one is drawn each week, and the pot carries over and grows until someone wins (the "find the joker" or "chase the ace" style) has paid entry, a prize by chance and a rollover. On my reading, none of the exempt categories allow that.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not going to tell you a game your regulars love is illegal from a website. I'd tell you to ring your council's licensing team or a licensing solicitor before you start one, or before the pot gets big enough for someone to complain. Section 258 of the Act makes it an offence to promote a lottery that isn't exempt or licensed.

"Free ticket with every pint": is that a raffle?

A lottery needs people to pay to take part. A draw that's really free to enter isn't one. But the law counts paying for goods "at a price or rate which reflects the opportunity to participate" as paying to enter. So if you put the pint up 20p for raffle night and hand out a ticket with every one, that's paying to enter. If the pint is the normal price, anyone can get a ticket free by asking at the bar or by post, and the prizes are the same either way, it's a free draw and outside the lottery rules altogether. Schedule 2 of the Act sets out the conditions, and they're stricter than they sound, so read them before you print a poster.

Five mistakes that turn a raffle into a problem

The pub keeps the profit. Neither a charity raffle nor a customer lottery lets the pub make money from tickets.

Tickets sold all week. For a charity raffle, tickets can only be sold at the event. A book of tickets behind the bar for a fortnight doesn't fit.

A prize over £50 in the weekly draw. The £50 cap on customer lotteries is per ticket. A £60 hamper is over.

Two draws in a week. Friday meat raffle plus a Sunday hamper draw breaks the seven-day rule.

No paper tickets. Customer lottery tickets have to be documents with the details on. A name on a list isn't one.

For the other games pubs run, poker, bingo and quiz prizes, the limits are in my pub gambling rules guide, and bingo is covered in full in the bingo night guide. If the raffle sits inside a bigger charity night, the race night guide covers that too.

If you've got TVs in the pub, StockTap TV has a raffle draw for the screens, so the whole room sees the numbers come out, alongside the phone quiz and phone bingo. It's £34 a month for the whole pub with a 14-day free trial.

This is a licensee's plain-English reading of the Gambling Act 2005 and the Gambling Commission's guidance, not legal advice. Your council's licensing team can confirm anything specific.

Common questions

Do you need a licence to run a raffle in a pub?

Not for a raffle at an event for a good cause, or for a customer lottery run for your customers on the premises. Both are exempt under Schedule 11 of the Gambling Act 2005 if you stick to their conditions.

Can a pub keep the money from a raffle?

No. A raffle at an event must be for a purpose other than private gain, such as a charity, and a customer lottery must be run so that no profit is made. The pub can benefit from the extra trade, not the ticket money.

Is a pub meat raffle legal?

It can be, run as a customer lottery: tickets sold only to customers on the premises, no prize worth more than £50, no profit, paper tickets with the details on, no more than one draw every seven days and no rollover.

How much can you spend on raffle prizes?

For a raffle at an event, up to £500 of the ticket money can be spent on prizes and up to £100 on expenses. Donated prizes have no limit.

Can raffle tickets be sold before the event?

Not for an incidental lottery at an event. Tickets can only be sold at the event and while it is taking place. Selling tickets in advance needs a different type of lottery, such as a registered small society lottery.

Are rollover jackpots allowed in pub raffles?

No. None of the exempt lottery types allow a rollover, so a prize cannot carry over to a later draw.