Sports Club Raffles

Sports clubs — football, rugby, cricket, hockey, and others — run raffles in several formats: match-day draws, half-time 50/50s, end-of-season raffles, and members-only lotteries. The legal classification depends on who can buy tickets, when they are sold, and whether the draw is tied to an event. A half-time draw at a match is an incidental lottery. A season-long lottery with advance ticket sales is a small society lottery. A members-only draw restricted to club members may qualify as a private lottery.

Match-Day Raffles

A raffle held at a match — where tickets are sold in the ground and the draw takes place at half time or full time — operates as an incidental lottery. No registration or licence is needed.

The conditions are the same as for any incidental lottery:

• tickets sold at the match only (not online, not in advance at the clubhouse)
• draw takes place during the match (half time is the most common)
• no more than £500 deducted from proceeds for prizes
• no more than £100 deducted for expenses
• results announced at the match

Match-day raffles are typically administered by a small team of volunteers who sell tickets around the ground before kick-off and during the first half. The draw is conducted at half time, with winning numbers announced over the PA system. This format is straightforward and well within incidental lottery rules for most community-level clubs.

Variable pricing is permitted for incidental lotteries. A match-day raffle can offer "£1 per ticket or a strip of 5 for £3" without breaching any regulation.

50/50 Draws

The 50/50 raffle is the most common match-day format at sports clubs. Half the ticket sale proceeds go to the winner and half go to the club. The format is effective at matches because the prize value grows visibly as more tickets are sold — the total pot is often displayed or announced during the first half.

A 50/50 draw at a match operates as an incidental lottery when tickets are sold and drawn at the match. The £500 prize deduction limit applies to the amount deducted from proceeds for prizes. In a 50/50, the prize is 50% of proceeds — so the limit is reached when total ticket sales hit £1,000 (generating a £500 prize from proceeds). Draws generating more than £1,000 in ticket sales exceed the incidental lottery prize limit.

Clubs regularly exceeding this threshold for match-day draws have two options: register as a small society lottery (which allows prizes up to £25,000 per draw) or restrict the prize to £500 and allocate the remainder to the club's purposes.

Season-Long Raffles

Some sports clubs run a raffle over the course of a season — selling tickets at each home match with a single large draw at the end of the season. This is not an incidental lottery, because tickets are sold across multiple events with the draw taking place at a later date.

A season-long raffle requires registration as a small society lottery. The club must be a non-commercial society (most amateur and semi-professional sports clubs qualify). The standard rules apply: registration with the local authority, named promoter, uniform ticket pricing, mandatory ticket information, and a return within three months of the draw.

The per-draw limit for a small society lottery is £20,000 in proceeds. A club selling tickets over 20 home matches at £2 per ticket would need to sell more than 10,000 tickets across the season to approach this limit — unlikely for most community clubs, but large semi-professional clubs with regular attendances in the thousands should track cumulative sales.

Members-Only Draws

A raffle restricted to members of the sports club may qualify as a private society lottery. This requires:

• the club is a society established for a purpose other than running a lottery
• only club members may purchase tickets
• no advertising of the lottery outside the club membership
• all proceeds go to prizes or the club's purposes
• tickets state that it is a private lottery and name the club

A private society lottery requires no registration and no licence. It is a viable option for clubs that want to run a regular draw for members without the administrative obligations of small society lottery registration.

The limitation is the restriction to members. A draw open to match-day spectators who are not club members does not qualify as a private lottery — it must be genuinely restricted to the defined membership. If the club sells tickets to anyone attending a match (members and non-members alike), the raffle is either an incidental lottery (if event-based) or a small society lottery (if advance sales are involved).

Club Licensing Considerations

Sports clubs that hold premises licences (for serving alcohol at the clubhouse or ground) should be aware of the same premises licence interactions that apply to pub raffles. The raffle itself does not require a gambling premises licence, but alcohol offered as prizes must comply with the Licensing Act 2003.

Clubs with a Club Premises Certificate (CPC) — common for member-owned sports and social clubs — operate under slightly different rules from pubs with premises licences. The CPC allows the supply of alcohol to members and their guests. Alcohol as raffle prizes at a members' event is covered by the CPC, but prizes at events open to the general public may require a temporary event notice (TEN).

Registration: Club or Supporter Group

Sports clubs often have both a club committee and a separate supporters' group, friends of the club, or fundraising committee. Either body can run a raffle, but the registration must match the promoting society.

If the supporters' group is a separate entity (its own constitution, its own committee), it registers separately with the local authority and runs raffles under its own name. If the club itself runs the raffle through its main committee, the club registers.

The tickets, the return, and the registration must all name the same society. A raffle run by "Greenfield FC Supporters' Club" with tickets naming "Greenfield Football Club" is technically non-compliant.

Reporting

For incidental lotteries (match-day draws within the limits), no return is required.

For small society lotteries (season-long draws, advance-sale raffles), the club or supporters' group must submit a return to the local authority within three months of each draw. Clubs running draws at multiple events across a season should clarify with the local authority whether each match-day draw is a separate lottery (each requiring its own return) or whether the season-long programme constitutes a single lottery with one return at the end.

All records must be retained for three years. For full details, see Returns and Reporting.

Questions about sports club raffles? See our help centre.

Last reviewed: February 2026