Facebook Competitions in the UK (Rules + How-to)

Running a giveaway on a UK Facebook page looks like a marketing decision. Legally, it's two decisions. The first is whether your promotion counts as a free draw, a genuine skill competition, or an unlicensed lottery, which is a criminal matter under gambling law. The second is whether your post tells entrants everything the advertising rules require, which is where the Advertising Standards Authority gets involved.

Most UK page owners get the first part right by accident, because a plain "comment to enter" giveaway with a free entry is fine. Where people come unstuck is the second part: missing conditions, no closing date, and no way of showing afterwards that a real winner was picked. This guide covers both, in plain terms, and ends with a practical sequence for running one.

One caveat before we start: this is general information, not legal advice, and the rules summarised here were accurate at the time of writing. For anything with a significant prize fund or an unusual mechanic, take advice from a solicitor who works on promotions.

The short version

If your Facebook competition is free to enter and you pick the winner at random, you're running a free draw. Free draws don't need a gambling licence in the UK, and you simply need to follow the advertising rules about what to disclose.

If you charge for entry and the winner is picked at random, you're running a lottery, and commercial businesses can't license their own lotteries. That makes it illegal unless you add a genuine free entry route alongside the paid one.

If you charge for entry but winning genuinely depends on skill, knowledge or judgement, you're running a prize competition, which sits outside gambling law, provided the skill element is real rather than decorative.

Everything below is detail on those three paths and on the disclosure rules that apply to all of them.

Free draw, prize competition, or lottery?

UK gambling law is built on the Gambling Act 2005, and the distinction that matters is simple to state: a promotion is a lottery if winning depends wholly on chance and entrants have to pay to take part. Lotteries need an operating licence, and a commercial company cannot obtain a lottery licence to promote its own products. Promoting or managing an illegal lottery is a criminal offence, carrying a fine of up to £5,000 and up to 51 weeks' imprisonment in England and Wales, or six months in Scotland.

Break either half of that definition and you're outside lottery territory:

• Remove the payment and you have a free draw. A random winner is fine. This is what the overwhelming majority of Facebook giveaways are.
• Remove the pure chance, by making winning depend on real skill, and you have a prize competition. You can charge for these.

Our guide on whether a raffle is legal on Facebook goes deeper into the raffle side specifically, which is where UK page owners most often cross the line without realising it. For how the same question is answered in other jurisdictions, see are Facebook giveaways legal.

The skill test, and why most quiz questions fail it

If you intend to charge for entry and rely on the skill route, the skill has to do actual work. The statutory standard is that the promoter must reasonably expect the required skill, knowledge or judgement either to deter a significant proportion of people from entering, or to prevent a significant proportion of those who do enter from winning.

That's a higher bar than most promoters assume. "What is the capital of France?" does not deter anybody and does not stop anybody winning, so a paid entry competition resting on it is an illegal lottery with a quiz question stapled to the front. Where a promotion has several stages, it's the first stage that has to carry the skill.

Multiple choice is not automatically disqualified, but it only works if there are genuinely plausible alternative answers and the right one isn't obvious. In practice, if you're running a free giveaway you don't need to think about any of this: free entry already takes you out of lottery territory, and you can pick at random with a clear conscience.

When entry becomes "payment"

"Payment" is broader than handing over cash. It covers money or money's worth, and it includes paying extra to reflect the chance to enter, paying to find out whether you've won, or paying to collect a prize.

Some things that commonly worry people are not payment. Paying the ordinary rate of postage, or the standard cost of a phone call or message, doesn't count. Buying a product at its normal price doesn't count either, so a "buy anything this week and you're entered" promotion is not automatically a lottery. Premium-rate calls and texts, on the other hand, are payment.

For a Facebook competition this is usually straightforward: commenting on a post costs nothing, so there's no payment and no problem. The risk appears when a page bolts on a paid element, such as asking people to buy a ticket, make a donation, or pay into a pot for a random draw.

The free entry route, if you do charge

If you want a paid entry route and a random winner, the law allows it only if there's a genuine free alternative running alongside. Three conditions have to be met:

1. The free route must involve no payment beyond ordinary communication costs, such as standard post, and must be no less convenient than the paid route.
2. The existence of the choice must be publicised in a way likely to reach everyone who intends to take part.
3. Prize allocation must not discriminate between paid and free entrants, so the draw can't quietly favour the people who paid.

The legislation predates social media and doesn't mention Facebook or email, but the same principles apply. The practical trap is convenience: if paid entry is two taps in an app and free entry means posting a letter, you may struggle to argue the routes are equally convenient.

What the CAP Code requires in your post

Gambling law decides whether your promotion is lawful. The CAP Code, enforced by the ASA, decides what you have to tell people, and this is where most UK giveaways fall short. The information has to be available before or at the point of entry, and has to stay accessible for the life of the promotion.

What you need to cover:

• How to enter, including a clear explanation of any free route, and either the proof of purchase required or a plain statement that no purchase is necessary.
• Significant conditions: start date, any geographic, age or technical restrictions, limits on the number of entries per person, and your full business name and address.
• A closing date, which is required in certain circumstances, including promotions aimed at children.
• Prize details: the minimum number and nature of the prizes, and whether a cash alternative exists.
• How the winner is chosen. If the judging is subjective, you must appoint an independent judge, or a panel with at least one independent member, and make the judge's name available on request.
• Notification and timing: how and when winners will be told, how the result will be announced, and, if prizes won't arrive until more than six weeks after the closing date, a statement saying so.

"Full business name and address" surprises people, but it's part of the significant conditions, which is one reason a linked rules page works better than trying to squeeze everything into a caption. Our giveaway rules generator gives you a structure to fill in so nothing on this list gets dropped.

Publishing winner details: CAP rule 8.28.5

This is the rule UK promoters breach most often, and it has teeth. Under CAP rule 8.28.5, you must publish, or make available, information showing that a valid award actually took place. Ordinarily that means the surname and county of major prizewinners, together with their winning entry where one applies.

Two further points matter in practice. First, making details available on request is an accepted alternative to publishing them, but the route has to be clear and easy for entrants to find. In a September 2024 ruling involving Nasty Gal, a reply to the winner buried among thousands of Instagram comments was held not to be sufficient, which is exactly the shortcut a busy page owner is tempted to take.

Second, because this involves personal data, you must tell entrants at or before entry that you intend to publish or share winner information, and give them the opportunity to object or to ask for less detail to be published. Even where an entrant objects, you still have to provide the information and the winning entry to the ASA if your promotion is challenged. The rule was amended in March 2019 following a consultation on the data protection implications.

UK GDPR and entrant data

A Facebook competition collects personal data, even if all you do is read names off a comment thread. Once you export entries, keep a winners list, or contact people to arrange delivery, you're processing data and need a lawful basis for it, a clear purpose, and a sensible retention period rather than an indefinite spreadsheet.

The overlap with rule 8.28.5 is the awkward part: the advertising rules push you to publish winner details, while data protection law pushes you to publish no more than necessary. The resolution is the one the ASA describes, namely telling entrants up front what you'll publish and limiting it to what the rule actually needs, which is normally a surname and a county rather than a full name, town and photograph. Our guide to Facebook giveaways and GDPR covers the data side in more detail.

What Meta's own rules add

Separate from UK law, Facebook's own promotion policies apply, and breaching them risks your post or page rather than a prosecution. The recurring points are that you must state the promotion is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by Facebook, that you take on full responsibility for running it lawfully, and that you cannot require people to share a post to their personal timeline or to a friend's timeline as a condition of entry. Asking for comments, reactions, follows or tags is accepted. Because Meta revises these policies periodically, check the current version before you launch rather than relying on a guide.

How to run a compliant UK Facebook competition, step by step

1. Decide which of the three things you're running. Free to enter and random? Free draw, and you're on the simplest path. Paid and random? You need a genuine free route. Paid and skill-based? The skill has to be real.

2. Write the rules before the post. Cover the significant conditions list above, including your business name and address, the closing date with a time and time zone, prize details, how the winner is chosen, and your intention to publish the winner's surname and county.

3. Host the rules somewhere stable and link to them from the post, rather than relying on a caption that gets truncated or edited.

4. Keep the entry mechanic simple. One action, such as commenting, keeps you clear of both the payment question and the complexity that causes disputes.

5. Close on time and treat late entries as invalid, which is only defensible if you published an exact closing time.

6. Draw the winner at random and on the record. Record the screen, and note the number of valid entries. Our guide on how to pick a winner on Facebook walks through the mechanics, including removing duplicate entries and drawing backups in the same round.

7. Announce properly. Publish the result where entrants can find it, with the detail rule 8.28.5 expects, and keep your entry list and recording in case the promotion is ever questioned.

Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK

The Gambling Act 2005 covers Great Britain, meaning England, Wales and Scotland, and Northern Ireland historically ran on separate legislation that made promoters either exclude Northern Ireland, offer a free route there, or offer a free route UK-wide. The Betting, Gaming, Lotteries and Amusements (Amendment) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 came into effect on 27 April 2022 and brought the prize draw position broadly into line across the UK.

Practically, that means a UK-wide Facebook giveaway no longer needs the "not open to Northern Ireland" exclusion that older template rules still carry. If you're reusing rules written before 2022, that clause is worth revisiting.

Common mistakes

Treating a paid raffle as a giveaway. Charging for tickets and drawing at random is a lottery. This is the mistake with actual legal consequences.

A skill question that isn't one. An easy question in front of a paid draw doesn't convert it into a competition.

No closing date, or a vague one. "Ends this weekend" invites disputes and falls short of what the Code expects.

Announcing the winner in a buried reply. The Nasty Gal ruling makes clear that a comment lost in a thread doesn't discharge the obligation to show a valid award took place.

Publishing more than you said you would. Naming a winner in full, with their town and photograph, when you never told entrants you'd publish anything, creates a data protection problem on top of an advertising one.

Copying US template rules. Much of the giveaway advice online is written for the US and discusses the FTC and state sweepstakes law. It doesn't map onto the Gambling Act or the CAP Code.

The bottom line

For most UK Facebook pages the legal position is comfortable: keep entry free, pick at random, and gambling law is satisfied without a licence. The work is in disclosure. Publish proper rules covering the significant conditions, give an exact closing date, say how the winner will be chosen, tell entrants what winner information you'll publish, then actually publish it somewhere findable and keep your records. Charging for entry is where the serious risk starts, and at that point you need either a genuine free route or genuine skill, not a token quiz question.