Prize competition glossary: the terms explained

Entering

• Prize competition: a contest for a prize that is kept outside the legal definition of a lottery by a genuine skill test, a free entry route of equal standing, or both. One that is not a lottery, betting or gaming is not gambling under the Gambling Act 2005.
• Lottery: in law, an arrangement where you pay to take part and prizes are allocated wholly by chance. Lotteries cannot be run for private or commercial gain.
• Free draw: a prize draw that costs nothing to enter beyond the normal cost of sending your entry, such as a stamp.
• Skill question: a question you must answer correctly for your entry to count. At Grand Draws it is multiple-choice, and a wrong answer means the entry does not qualify, whether it was paid or posted.
• Free postal entry: a way to enter without paying, by posting your details and your skill answer, with exactly the same chance of winning as a paid ticket. Ours is explained at /free-entry.
• Qualifying entry: an entry that meets every condition in the terms, including a correct skill answer and arriving before entries close. Only qualifying entries go into the draw.
• Closing date: the published date and time when entries close. At Grand Draws the draw runs automatically at 9pm on the closing date.

Tickets and odds

• Ticket cap: the maximum number of tickets that can ever be in a draw, published before you enter.
• Per-person limit: the most entries any one person can have in a competition. The same limit applies to postal entries.
• Odds: your chance of winning, worked out as your tickets divided by the total tickets in the draw. With a published cap, the odds you calculate are your worst case.
• Sell-out: when every ticket up to the cap has been sold. A Grand Draws competition is drawn on its closing date whether or not it sells out, with the full advertised prize.
• VAT on entries: paid entries to prize draws with a free entry route are subject to VAT at 20%, as the Government confirmed in February 2026. Our prices include any VAT.

The draw

• Automatic draw: a draw run by software at a set time rather than by a person on camera. Ours run at 9pm on the closing date and are not streamed; the published record is how you check them.
• Commit-reveal: a way of drawing a winner where the operator locks in a secret value before entries close and reveals it afterwards, so anyone can check it was not changed.
• Seed: the secret random value we commit to before a draw and reveal after it. It is combined with the beacon value to pick the winning ticket.
• Commitment: the published fingerprint of the seed, made with SHA-256 before entries close. If the revealed seed does not produce the same fingerprint, the draw fails the check.
• SHA-256: a standard cryptographic hash function, specified by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in FIPS 180-4. It turns any input into a fixed-length fingerprint, and any change to the input changes the fingerprint.
• drand beacon: a public source of randomness run by the League of Entropy, a group of independent organisations. It publishes a new random value every 30 seconds that nobody can predict in advance.
• Beacon round: one numbered output of the drand beacon. We name a future round before entries close, so its value cannot be known when we commit.
• HMAC: a way of combining a secret key with a message using a hash function, defined in RFC 2104. Our draw uses HMAC-SHA256 with the seed as the key and the beacon value, tagged with the winner's position, as the message. The first 8 bytes of the result, read as a whole number, are divided by the number of entries still in the draw, and the remainder plus one gives the winning ticket.
• Draw check: our public tool at /draw-check, which recomputes a draw in your browser from the published seed, commitment, beacon and entry count.
• Entry list: the list of ticket numbers in a draw. Our listed competitions each have an entry list page, so a winning ticket number can be matched to an entry.
• Verifiable random draw: a draw whose result anyone can recompute from published data. Our statement: winners are selected at random from all qualifying entries, in accordance with the laws of chance, using a verifiable random draw.

Prizes and winners

• Cash prize: a prize paid as money rather than goods. Every Grand Draws prize is cash, paid by bank transfer.
• Winner verification: the checks before a prize is paid, confirming the winner's identity, that they are 18 or over and resident in Great Britain, and that the entry qualified. We pay within one working day of verifying the winner.
• Published winners: the public record of who won. We publish first name, county and winning ticket number, and a winner's surname and county are available on request.
• Windfall: a one-off gain such as a prize. For someone entering as a private individual, it is not taxed as income; our tax guide links to HMRC's guidance.
• Instant win: a prize revealed the moment you enter, rather than at a draw. Instant wins are coming to future Grand Draws competitions and are not part of our launch.

Rules and codes

• Gambling Commission: the regulator for gambling in Great Britain, including lotteries. It does not license prize competitions or free draws that meet the Gambling Act 2005 requirements.
• CAP Code: the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing, written by the Committee of Advertising Practice and enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority. Section 8 covers promotions, including prize draws, closing dates and publishing winners.
• DCMS Voluntary Code: the Voluntary Code of Good Practice for Prize Draw Operators, published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It sets out player protection, transparency and accountability measures, which its signatories agreed to put in place by 20 May 2026.

Staying in control

• Spend limit: a monthly cap you set on how much you can spend on entries. At Grand Draws you set it yourself in your account.
• Self-exclusion: locking yourself out of your account for a period you choose. It cannot be undone with one click.
• 18+ age check: confirming that someone is 18 or over. Grand Draws paid competitions are for residents of Great Britain aged 18 and over, and age is checked at sign-up and before any prize is paid.
• Wheel spins: turns of the reward wheels in our free rewards programme, unlocked with XP. Buying tickets earns no XP or wheel spins, and every wheel's odds are published on our rewards page.

Common questions

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