Entry fees and the law
Is it gambling?
Almost always, no — because almost always there is no entry fee. Once money changes hands it becomes a real question, and it is worth understanding rather than guessing at.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. It is a plain-English map of the landscape, written to help you put the right question to somebody who can answer it properly. Every claim here links to the official page it came from. If money is involved and you are unsure, check with your local licensing authority before you run it.
It takes three things
Regulated gambling in Great Britain needs all three of these at once. Remove any one and you are outside it.
A payment to take part
An entry fee, a stake, a buy-in. Not the price of your pint.
A prize
Money, or something worth money.
An outcome you do not control
Whether Arsenal win on Saturday.
A Last Man Standing competition always has the second and the third. Whether it has the first is entirely your choice as the organiser, and it is the choice that decides everything else on this page.
Where the money goes
If you read one section, read this one. Who ends up with the entry money matters more than what the competition is called or where it is played.
- Nothing to think aboutNo entry fee at all
- Free to enter, with a prize the venue or a sponsor puts up. No payment means no gambling, whatever the prize is worth. It still fills a room on a quiet night, which is usually the point.
- StraightforwardEntry fee, every penny back out as prizes
- Players pay in, the winner takes the pot, the organiser keeps nothing. Nobody is profiting and nobody is trading.
- StraightforwardEntry fee, proceeds to a charity or club funds
- The same thing with the destination changed. Say up front which cause it is and announce the total afterwards - the players are the ones who raised it.
- Ask firstThe venue or organiser keeps a share
- This is the one that changes the character of the whole thing, because it is the point at which somebody is making money out of other people betting. Get proper advice before running it this way.
The questions people ask
- Is a Last Man Standing competition gambling?
It depends entirely on whether people pay to enter. Gambling law in Great Britain turns on three ingredients together: a payment to take part, a prize, and an outcome nobody taking part controls. Take away any one of them and what is left is not regulated gambling.
A competition with no entry fee is not gambling, however big the prize is. That is the version most LMSLocal competitions run, and it is the version with nothing to think about.
- Can I charge an entry fee?
People do, and there are lawful ways to do it, but this is where it stops being a simple question and starts depending on who you are, who is playing, and where the money ends up. The rest of this page is about that.
If you want the prize without the question, put a free entry route alongside the paid one. The Gambling Commission is specific about what that takes: the free route must be no less convenient than the paid one, promoted just as prominently, and the competition must not be able to tell the two apart when it works out who won.
- Is it not just a sweepstake? Those are allowed at work.
This is the most common misunderstanding, and it matters. The office sweepstake exemptions - work lotteries, private society lotteries - are exemptions for lotteries, and a lottery in law is one where the prize is allocated by a process relying wholly on chance. Names drawn out of a hat.
In Last Man Standing your players choose their own team every round. That is judgement, not chance, so those exemptions are not the ones that apply. Picking a team to win a match is a bet on a future event, and betting is governed by different parts of the Act.
- So what does apply to a paid competition?
The reliefs that matter for betting are about who is running it, not what it is called. The Gambling Act 2005 says a person does not commit an offence by making or accepting a bet if they act "otherwise than in the course of a business", and it treats betting as private where it is between people who live at the same premises, or between people employed by the same employer.
A competition among colleagues at one workplace, where every penny of the entry money goes back out as prizes and nobody takes a cut, is the clearest case there is. The further you get from that, the more worth asking about it becomes.
- Can a members club run one for its members?
A club running a competition for its own members, not for profit, with the money going back to the players or into club funds, sits at the comfortable end of this. But be careful with the reason people usually give for it: the tidy "members of a society" exemption is a lottery exemption, and it needs the result decided by chance, which Last Man Standing is not.
There is no equally tidy members exemption for betting. What carries the weight is that nobody is doing it commercially and nobody is profiting - so keep it that way, write down where the money went, and if your club is large or the pot is significant, ask your local licensing authority rather than relying on this page.
- Can a pub run one?
A pub is harder than a club, for one reason: a landlord is running a business, on business premises, and whether something happens "in the course of a business" is exactly the question the law asks.
The fact most likely to put a competition on the wrong side of it is the venue keeping a slice of the entry money. Money that goes straight back out as prizes, or to a named charity, is a different picture from money that ends up in the till. If the real goal is bringing people in on a quiet Tuesday - and it usually is - a free-to-enter competition with a prize the pub puts up does that without raising the question at all.
- Does LMSLocal handle the entry money?
No, and that is deliberate. We never take entry fees, never hold stakes and never pay prizes. We sell you the tool that runs the competition - fixtures, picks, eliminations - and what your players pay, if anything, is collected and paid out by you, in whatever way you choose.
It means we are not part of anybody else’s gambling arrangements. It also means the way your competition is funded is your responsibility rather than ours, and we cannot be your route to being compliant.
Check it yourself
The actual sources, not summaries of summaries. They are short, and they are written for the public rather than for lawyers.
- Free draws and prize competitions
Gambling Commission
What keeps a prize competition outside gambling regulation, and exactly what a free entry route has to look like.
- Types of lottery you can run without a licence
Gambling Commission
The exempt lotteries - work, private society, residents, customer - with their limits. Worth reading to see why they do not fit a competition where the players choose.
- The status of lotteries under the Act
Gambling Commission
The formal definition, including the "wholly on chance" test that decides whether you are looking at a lottery at all.
- Gambling Act 2005, section 296
legislation.gov.uk
Private betting, and the line about acting otherwise than in the course of a business.
- Gambling Act 2005, Schedule 15
legislation.gov.uk
What counts as private betting: domestic betting and workers betting, defined.
All of the above is the law in England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own gambling legislation and none of this transfers to it.
Next
Raising money with one
How clubs and pubs actually structure a competition that raises something — what a typical one brings in, and the three ways of setting it up.