Promoting multiple society lotteries lawfully
The Act permits licensed or registered non-commercial societies and ELMs to promote lotteries. The intention of the relevant provisions is to make it possible for a noncommercial society to use a lottery as a means of raising funds from the public for the cause promoted by the society, or a local authority to raise funds to use for any purpose where it has power to incur expenditure. The provisions are relatively limited in scope.
The Act also allows those societies to appoint a person who is not a member, officer or employee of the society - an External Lottery Manager (ELM) - to make the arrangements for the lottery on their behalf. Where arrangements for the lottery are made by an ELM on behalf of a society both the ELM and society promote the lottery. The intention of these provisions is also relatively limited in scope: they are designed to do nothing more than allow a society to “outsource” the running of its lottery to a third party.
It is the view of the Commission that where an ELM, a society lottery operator or a collective of society lottery operators, promote multiple society lotteries under a single brand (a ‘branded lottery’ or ‘umbrella lottery’ scheme), each lottery must be organised and promoted in such a way as to ensure that the lotteries are not combined to form one single lottery, which could be a breach of the requirements of the Act and regulations.
The proceeds from one society lottery may not be used to fund any of the prizes or expenses in a different society lottery promoted under the same brand. For example proceeds from lottery A promoted by society A may not be rolled over to fund prizes in lottery B promoted by society B (a different society) or be used to pay or subsidise any prizes in society lottery B.
The relevant monetary limits set out in the Act apply to each of the individual society lotteries separately.
Under the Act the proceeds of each lottery draw are the responsibility of the individual society lottery operators. It is each operator’s responsibility to ensure that the proceeds, including expenses and prizes, of its lottery are apportioned and distributed lawfully and that a minimum of 20% of the proceeds of each of its lottery draws are applied to a purpose for which the promoting society is established or the local authority has power to incur expenditure.
Each society must meet the requirements of a non-commercial society set out in the Act and any publicly available criteria relied upon by the Commission in assessing compliance with those requirements. The Commission will always look at the reality of each situation in determining whether the test for a non-commercial society is met, and when deciding the imposition of licence conditions.
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Last updated: 17 July 2023
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