Blog: Take the risk out of prize draw ads and you’ll hit the jackpot

Since lockdown, we’ve seen an increasing number of ads for prize competitions offering listeners tickets for promotions offering prizes such as houses, sports cars and large sums of money. The ASA have investigated complaints against a number of such ads, so how do you tip the odds in your favour and make sure your ad complies?

The first question we ask when we see your ad is “has this promotion been licensed by the Gambling Commission (GC) as a lottery, or is it a prize competition?” The GC is the body that licences lotteries in the UK – unlicensed lotteries could be illegal, so it’s important to determine whether or not your ad promotes a legal service. 

If your client’s promotion isn’t licensed, we’ll therefore need to decide whether we think it’s likely to be considered illegal. We do this by referring to advice the GC publish on the differences between lotteries and prize competitions and we’ll ask to see the full conditions and mechanics of the promotion as well as any legal advice obtained by your client.

We’ll be looking to see whether or not your client’s promotion allows participants to enter for free, and if so whether free entries have the same chance of winning the same prize as those paying to enter. If that’s the case, the ad should reflect this and make clear to listeners how they enter for free/that a free entry route is available.

If there’s no way to enter the promotion for free and winning depends on paying for entry and a significant element of chance, the promotion could be considered a lottery. Conversely, the result of a genuine prize competition must depend on the exercise of skill, knowledge, or judgement.

The Gambling Act section 14 (5) explains that the requirement for skill, knowledge or judgement in a competition must prevent:

• a significant proportion of people from taking part, OR
• a significant proportion of people who do take part from receiving a prize. 

That means we’ll need to see any specialist legal advice obtained by your client explaining how the requirements for listeners to e.g. answer a question, are likely to be determined to meet these tests. This might mean for example that your client will be asked to show that they have put this question to focus groups so that the likely proportion of correct answers can be predicted.

Once we’re satisfied with your client’s argument for the promotion complying with the law, we’ll need to consider whether or not the ad describes the promotion in a way that is clear and not misleading.

This means for instance that prizes should be accurately described and you should be careful to make sure that significant restrictions or conditions aren’t omitted from the ad. The ASA have investigated a number of complaints against ads where the end date for a promotion was changed, the prize advertised was substituted for something else, or a significantly lower value cash prize was awarded because the sales of tickets did not reach the advertiser’s target. 

Given that there are a number of steps we need to work through with you before we approve ads for prize draws and competitions, it’s worth allowing enough time for us to carefully consider the legal status and conditions to the promotion and to get your case for approval together before you upload. Don’t leave it to the luck of the draw and chance an upheld complaint.

Katherine is Senior Clearance Executive at Radiocentre.