Are Prize Competitions Legal in the UK?

The short answer

Yes — UK prize competitions are legal, provided they comply with the Gambling Act 2005. The crucial test is whether the competition is genuinely skill-based or whether it instead falls within the legal definition of a lottery, which requires a Gambling Commission licence to operate.

In practice, two legal mechanisms allow paid-entry competitions to run lawfully without a gambling licence:

1. They include a genuine element of skill that filters out chance-based entries, OR
2. They offer a free entry route that is as easy and prominent as the paid route.

Most reputable UK operators — Coast Competitions included — apply both mechanisms as a belt-and-braces approach.

The legal framework: Gambling Act 2005

The Gambling Act 2005 governs all forms of gambling in Great Britain. Lotteries are a regulated form of gambling under the Act — you cannot run a paid lottery as a private commercial enterprise without a licence from the Gambling Commission.

A lottery under the Act has three characteristics: (a) people pay to enter, (b) one or more prizes are awarded, and (c) the prizes are allocated by a process which relies wholly on chance. The third characteristic is the key one. The moment a competition introduces a meaningful skill element, it stops being a lottery.

What counts as "wholly chance"?

Schedule 2 of the Act sets out when a process is treated as relying wholly on chance. A skill question only takes the competition outside the lottery definition if it is hard enough that it can reasonably be expected to prevent a significant proportion of people from receiving a prize, or to prevent a significant proportion of people who wish to enter from doing so.

That is why a serious operator will not use a question like “What colour is the sky?” — it would not filter anyone out and the competition would almost certainly be treated as an unlicensed lottery.

The free entry route (Section 339)

Section 339 of the Gambling Act provides a separate, parallel route to legality: a paid prize draw is not classed as a lottery if there is a free entry route that is just as easy to use as the paid route, and if the paid and free entrants compete for the same prize on the same terms.

In the UK industry, the free entry route is almost always a postal entry: you write your name, address, date of birth and competition details on a postcard and post it to the operator's registered address. The operator must accept it as if you had paid.

If you are entering a competition online, you can always find the free entry instructions in the operator's Terms and Conditions. On Coast Competitions, see our free postal entry instructions.

Skill question + free entry: belt and braces

Because the Act's definition of “sufficient skill” can be argued in court on a case-by-case basis, most well-advised UK operators apply both mechanisms in parallel:

• A skill question hard enough to filter out a meaningful share of chance entries.
• A clearly published free postal entry route that mirrors the paid route.

Doing both means the competition is exempt from the lottery definition on two independent grounds, which gives the operator and its entrants confidence that the competition is lawful even if the regulator were to challenge one element.

How Coast Competitions complies

Coast Competitions is run by COAST COMPETITIONS LTD (UK Companies House number 17087259). Every competition on the platform:

• Includes a multiple-choice skill question that must be answered correctly before entry is valid.
• Publishes a free postal entry route in the Terms & Conditions that is open to anyone, awards the same prize, and is judged on the same skill question.
• Uses a cryptographically secure random number generator (CSPRNG) for automated draws and publishes the seed and total ticket count so any entrant can re-run the calculation. See our draw results page.
• Restricts entry to UK residents aged 18 or over and publishes clear Terms & Conditions naming the promoter and the registered address.

What about charity raffles and licensed lotteries?

Not every UK prize draw is a skill-based competition. The Gambling Act 2005 also provides for licensed lotteries — for example, the National Lottery (operated under a dedicated licence), society lotteries run by charities, and small-scale incidental lotteries. These have different rules and explicitly do not need a skill element because they hold a Commission licence.

If you see a UK operator running a paid prize draw with no skill question and no free entry route, they should hold a lottery licence from the Gambling Commission — and you can verify any licensed operator in the public register. If they do not appear there, treat the operator with caution.

Summary

UK skill-based prize competitions are legal under the Gambling Act 2005 when they include either a genuine skill element or a free entry route — and the safest operators apply both. The Gambling Commission does not licence skill-based competitions because they are not classified as gambling.

If you want to see the rules applied in practice, browse our live UK prize competitions, read our Terms & Conditions, or learn more in our companion guide: Are competition winnings tax free in the UK?