Inside online illegal individual-led lotteries and raffles: What consumer research tells us
Our Research and Impact Manager Rupam Jagota introduces new research looking at how consumers engage with online illegal individual-led lotteries and raffles promoted on social media.
Posted 13 August 2026 by Rupam Jagota
Today we published new research looking at how consumers engage with illegal individual-led lotteries and raffles on social media, particularly on TikTok, but also on Facebook and Instagram.
Why is this research needed?
Our Intelligence team have seen an increase in reports of suspected illegal lotteries and raffles on TikTok in 2025 compared with 2024. While these figures have highlighted that these activities may be occurring more often, there were several important gaps in our understanding. We didn’t know why consumers may choose to take part in these draws and what their journeys may look like, or why and how hosts run them. To help answer these questions, we commissioned Yonder Consulting to undertake a three-stage mixed-methods project.
What did the project involve?
In the first stage of the project, we used an innovative digital intelligence approach to analyse public TikTok raffle-related conversations taking place online over the last 12 months. This allowed us to observe how these lotteries and raffles are discussed, promoted and experienced in real-world online environments, rather than relying solely on what consumers tell us in research settings like interviews and surveys.
Only through using the digital intelligence approach, were Yonder able to map how the ecosystem operates in practice, including (but not limited to): how consumers first come across these lotteries and raffles (through LIVE streams, recommendations and reposts), how participation often extends beyond TikTok through payment platforms and other third-party channels, and cues used by both hosts and participants that indicate trust and legitimacy.
Importantly, these digital intelligence findings were vital in identifying the key areas needing further exploration in the quantitative survey and the qualitative interviews that followed, such as prevalence of consumer participation, how often users stumble into the raffles or lotteries versus actively seeking them out, whether hosts framing the lotteries and raffles as ‘competitions’ and using other legitimacy cues impact consumer perception of risk and legality, and so on.
Together, these three stages helped us build a much clearer picture of consumer engagement with online illegal lotteries and raffles.
What did we find?
The research revealed several important insights. Consumers were generally more concerned with whether a raffle seemed genuine and offered a realistic chance of winning than whether it was being run legally. Low ticket prices, informal presentation of the raffles and lotteries, and ability to use familiar payment methods often reduced consumers’ perceptions of risk, which make them less likely to report concerns.
We also found that some smaller-scale hosts may not fully understand the rules, while others appear to use language and payment practices to obscure what they are doing.
Another key finding is that the greatest risks to consumers often appeared beyond the original social media post advertising the raffle or lottery. Consumers are frequently directed to third-party websites, payment platforms or private messaging channels where information about the terms and conditions, protections, and legitimacy, can be much less clear.
What do these findings mean?
The research identified several areas of consideration for us and other relevant stakeholders in the gambling sector.
Findings show that the consumer journey often extends beyond the platform where the draw is advertised, highlighting the importance of understanding and monitoring external websites, payment links and peer-to-peer payment methods.
The findings also reinforce the need for proactive monitoring, intelligence-sharing and platform-level interventions in addition to relying on consumer reports of these raffles and lotteries taking place.
The research also points to the need for clearer guidance for individuals and small businesses about what is and is not permitted, alongside visible enforcement where activity appears deliberate or persistent.
What should future research focus on?
Unfortunately, we encountered some difficulties when recruiting participants for the qualitative interviews stage of the research.
The survey findings revealed that those aged 18 to 24 were more likely than older groups to have encountered or participated in these activities on TikTok. However, we struggled to recruit these younger individuals for the qualitative interviews, and therefore don’t have a comprehensive understanding of their consumer journeys. This makes them an important audience for future research and engagement. It would be valuable for future research to work to understand how these illegal online raffles and lotteries fit into wider gambling and digital entertainment behaviours, whether engagement with these raffles or lotteries could serve as a ‘gateway’ into other forms of gambling, and which enforcement and communication approaches are most effective for this younger cohort. To impactfully address some of these questions, we, as researchers should explore more innovative ways of tapping into this younger audience, such as digital ethnographies, online communities, longitudinal, and experimental approaches.
Similarly, we were only able to recruit one raffle host to the qualitative interviews, so it would be valuable for further research to examine the wider off-platform ecosystem, as well as how these activities are organised and promoted.
How does this research fit into the bigger picture?
This project is part of our ongoing work to understand consumer engagement with the illegal gambling market, supporting the Evidence Roadmap priorities on illegal gambling and crime. It has broadened our understanding of how consumers encounter and engage with a wider range of illegal gambling activities, building on previous research into illegal gambling websites.
That being said, we’re not stopping here. There are still important questions about how consumers engage with the illegal market, and we’ll continue to explore these through:
- additional phases of Consumer Voice research will be published soon and will include data from new Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) questions on consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites. These phases will also more deeply explore operator-based and regulatory factors that contribute to consumer engagement with illegal sites and will also further examine the four audience groups identified among users
- we will continue to build our understanding of novel products through our Consumer Voice programme, GSGB, and ongoing monitoring and intelligence gathering across the Commission.
Alongside this work, we’ll continue to write out to promoters of illegal lotteries to advise that activity is illegal. Where we decide to intervene, we will consider working with third parties, including website providers, social media businesses and payment providers to take down illegal activity; in the last 12 months, the Commission’s enforcement activity has resulted in 252 illegal lotteries being removed from social media platforms.
This research has provided us with insight into an aspect of the illegal gambling market that is relatively new; our aim is to continue strengthening the evidence base using innovative approaches so that we can better understand consumer experiences, identify emerging risks and target regulatory action where it can have the greatest impact in a digital ecosystem that’s rapidly changing.