If you've run a UK prize competition any time in the last year, you've probably felt the ground shift a little. A £1.3bn sector doesn't attract government attention for nothing, and in November 2025, it got some: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a Voluntary Code of Good Practice for Prize Draw Operators.
Signatories agreed to be fully compliant by 20 May 2026. That date has already passed.
Voluntary in name only
DCMS has been explicit: if the Code doesn't fix the problems they've identified, they'll bring forward legislation to regulate the sector directly. This is the industry's chance to prove self-regulation works — not a box you can quietly skip.
Why now
The Code exists because some operators were making it hard to spot the free entry route, burying odds and mechanics in dense terms and conditions, and running marketing that leaned hard on urgency and FOMO rather than honest information. None of that is new behaviour in competition marketing — but it's the kind of thing that eventually gets a regulator's attention, and it has.
The Code's stated aims are stronger player protections, more transparency, and clearer operator accountability. In practice, that translates into a handful of concrete requirements.
What it actually requires
- Free entry routes have to be genuinely findable. Not technically present somewhere in the small print — clearly publicised and easy to use.
- Terms and conditions have to be clear and accessible. Odds and draw mechanics can't be ambiguous or hidden in legal density that nobody actually reads.
- Marketing has to be honest about someone's actual chances. No exaggeration, no artificial urgency, nothing that sets an unrealistic expectation of winning.
- A reasonable age-verification process is required, and marketing can't be targeted at under-18s.
- There are specific limits on credit card use for entries — including a monthly cap and tighter restrictions for instant-win competitions specifically. The exact figures matter here, so this is worth checking against the Code's published text directly rather than relying on a summary (including this one).
None of this is exotic. If you're already running qualifying questions, a real free entry route, and terms and conditions someone could actually read in one sitting, you're most of the way there. If you're not, this is the reason to fix it now rather than after a complaint.
What this means if you're running competitions yourself
A few practical checks worth doing this week, regardless of what platform you're on:
- Find your own free entry route without help. If you had to think about where it is on your own site, an entrant definitely will too.
- Read your own terms and conditions like a stranger would. If the odds and draw mechanics aren't obvious within the first minute, that's a problem the Code is specifically aimed at.
- Look at your last few pieces of marketing copy. Would a regulator reading it in isolation call it honest about someone's actual chances of winning?
- Check your credit card entry setup against the Code's actual limits, not against what you assume they are.
We've built a fuller compliance checklist — covering the qualifying question requirements, free entry route setup, T&Cs, GDPR, and this Code specifically — into our documentation for account holders. Start a trial to see it, or get in touch if you'd like a copy without setting up an account.
Not legal advice
This is general commentary, not legal advice, and it's not a substitute for reading the Code itself or talking to a solicitor about your specific competitions. If anything here is unclear or you're not sure how it applies to you, get proper advice before you publish.
Where Giveawayz fits
We're not going to pretend a platform is a substitute for actually reading the Code. But qualifying questions, a free entry route that's on by default (not bolted on as an afterthought), and terms and conditions that are structured to be findable and readable — that's infrastructure we built in before this Code existed, because it was the right way to run a competition regardless of what the regulator eventually said about it.
If you're currently running competitions without that infrastructure and the last few weeks have made you nervous about it, that's a reasonable thing to be nervous about. Have a look at how we handle it, or get in touch if you want to talk through what your setup actually needs.