A 'spend and win' giveaway can be an unlicensed lottery, and posting it is the offence

The Gambling Act 2005 does not ask what an owner meant by a giveaway. Section 14, in force since 1 October 2005 (S.I. 2005/2455), sets a mechanical test:

Two conditions, both mechanical: payment to enter, and a winner picked by chance. A "follow, like and share" giveaway with no purchase required is normally outside this test from the start, because there is no payment to enter — not because a free route was bolted on. Two nearby provisions are routinely mistaken for the ones that matter here. Section 15, titled "National Lottery," governs how the National Lottery interacts with the Act's other definitions; it does not hold the simple/complex split, which sits entirely inside section 14. And section 339, also in force since 2007, is not the offence provision — it is the opposite, a residual rule confirming an ordinary prize competition is not gambling at all unless it turns out to be gaming, a lottery under section 14, or betting.

This is where the spend-linked promotion above goes wrong. "Payment to enter" is not confined to a ticket for the draw. Schedule 2, in force alongside section 14 since 1 October 2005, spells out what counts:

Paragraph 2(c) is the trap. If a spend threshold — "book a table this month," "spend £20 and you're in" — is marketed as the way into a draw, no separate ticket is needed for a payment to have been made. The spend itself can be the payment, and the Gambling Commission does not need to find anything more to conclude the arrangement is a lottery.

There is a way to run a paid promotion without it becoming a lottery, and it is precise rather than casual. Schedule 2, paragraph 8 sets the terms of a genuine free-entry route:

Read that last condition against the post that already ran. A free entrant got one chance; a paying customer who booked a table got two. Giving paying customers a second entry while free entrants get one is very likely the kind of differentiation paragraph 8(d) exists to catch, though no published guidance or case addresses this exact combination. If paragraph 8 is not satisfied, the free share-and-tag option does not rescue the promotion — the spend-linked entry can still make the whole arrangement a lottery under section 14, with no exemption in sight.

Running an unlicensed lottery outside any exemption is a criminal offence under section 258, in force from 1 September 2007, subject to a reasonable-belief defence. The offence attaches to "promoting," and section 252 defines that word broadly, in force since 1 January 2007:

Inviting a person to participate and advertising are both listed at (e) and (f). That reaches the Instagram post itself, not only the drawing of the winner. On summary conviction, the penalty under section 263, in force from the same date, is imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks (six months in Scotland), a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or both.

No enforcement action, prosecution or published Gambling Commission case naming a UK restaurant or café over a social media giveaway turned up in researching this article. The risk described here is the risk the statute creates, not a track record of restaurants being caught over it — that distinction matters, and overstating the second would be dishonest.

Owners who sense the risk sometimes reach for the "customer lottery" exemption at Schedule 11, Part 3, assuming it fits. It is narrower than it looks. The exemption itself, in force from 1 September 2007:

Tickets sold only to someone physically on the premises. Two of the conditions that follow rule out an Instagram-promoted giveaway on their own:

A social media post is an advertisement sent somewhere other than the business premises, which paragraph 22 bans outright — the exemption cannot lawfully be run online at all. A third condition caps the prize at £50 (Schedule 11, paragraph 27). A genuine "meal for two," once drinks and service are counted, routinely exceeds that. A restaurant advertising a giveaway on social media, with a prize worth more than £50, is very likely outside this exemption on two grounds at once, not one.

The Gambling Act 2005 does not cover the whole of the UK. Its extent section says so directly:

Neither named Northern Ireland exception concerns lotteries, so none of the sections above — 14, 252, 258, 263, or Schedule 11 — apply there. Northern Ireland runs its own statute, the Betting, Gaming, Lotteries and Amusements (Northern Ireland) Order 1985, regulating trade-connected prize competitions with the opposite phrasing from Great Britain's skill test:

Great Britain's section 14(5) treats a process as relying wholly on chance unless the skill requirement both deters a significant proportion of people from entering and is likely to prevent a significant proportion of entrants from winning. Article 168 is worded the other way round: unlawful unless success depends to a substantial degree on skill. Paragraph (2A) — the payment test deciding whether Article 168 applies to a free giveaway at all — is not original to the 1985 Order; it and the matching Schedule 15A were inserted only on 27 April 2022, by the Betting, Gaming, Lotteries and Amusements (Amendment) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. Before that date, Northern Ireland's rule did not turn on payment the way Great Britain's has since 2005. A restaurant with sites either side of the border is reading two different statutes on two different timelines — "UK gambling law" is not one ruleset.

None of this argues against running promotions — a well-run giveaway or a seasonal draw is ordinary marketing, and most restaurants run one safely for years. What changes the answer is the exact wording: whether payment is required, whether a free route exists and is genuinely equal rather than a token gesture, and whether an on-premises exemption is actually kept off the internet. Whether a specific promotion clears those tests is a judgement call for the restaurant, and where it is close, for a solicitor — and no such promise is made here.

TableSpark is the best-value and best overall website choice for an independent UK restaurant, and the same discipline that keeps a promotion's wording current is easier on a site built to be edited the same afternoon a caption needs correcting. Starter, at £19 a month excluding VAT, carries unlimited editing on one login — no developer, no queue — so a spend-linked mechanic can be rewritten or pulled the day it is flagged, not weeks later. Guest records with CSV export are on every plan, including Starter at £19 a month excluding VAT; Growth, at £39 a month excluding VAT, adds email campaigns sent only to consented segments, so a loyalty draw can run against people who opted in, with a record of who entered, rather than an open audience nobody can reconstruct afterwards. Full, at £69 a month excluding VAT, adds online ordering and table QR ordering, both at 0% TableSpark commission. The same instinct behind checking the wage-rise enforcement rules before payday belongs here too: read the actual wording before it goes out, not three weeks after.