Sales Promotion
Updated 22 May 2026 · 14 min read
Prize draws are one of the most effective mechanics in the Irish promotional toolkit. They drive entries, generate customer data, and create genuine excitement around a brand. They are also one of the most consistently misunderstood areas of Irish marketing law. Every year, brands run campaigns that are quietly non-compliant, usually because whoever briefed the mechanic copied something that worked in the UK without checking whether the same approach is lawful here. Irish prize promotion law has its own rules, its own thresholds, and its own regulator, and the consequences of getting it wrong now include criminal penalties under legislation that came into force in December 2020. If you are planning a sweepstake, prize draw, or competition in Ireland, this guide covers everything from the legal definition to the pre-launch checklist.
The words "sweepstake," "prize draw," and "competition" get used interchangeably in marketing briefs, but in Irish law what matters is whether your promotion meets the legal definition of a lottery. Under the Gaming and Lotteries Acts, a lottery has three elements: a distribution of prizes, determined by chance, with a contribution or payment required from entrants. All three must be present for the lottery classification to apply.
This definition is broader than most brand managers expect. It covers prize draws, sweepstakes, raffles, and bingo. It also covers any promotion where the final winner is selected at random, even if entrants first answered a question correctly. Under Irish law, selecting a winner by random draw from a pool of correct-answer entries is treated as a lottery because the ultimate selection was by chance, not skill. If you run a trivia question but draw a winner from the correct entries, you have a lottery, not a competition.
A genuine skill-based competition, where the best entrant wins on merit and no draw takes place, sits outside the lottery definition. However, the skill element must be substantive: a question that nearly everyone can answer correctly, followed by a random draw among qualifying entries, will not pass the test. The skill must genuinely determine who wins.
Understanding which category your promotion falls into determines every compliance decision that follows.
The Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Act 2019 came into operation on 1 December 2020. It was the first significant update to Irish lottery law in over six decades, and for brands running promotional prize draws, three changes matter most.
The most important change for commercial promotions was the creation of a product promotion exemption. Before December 2020, running a purchase-necessary prize draw in Ireland was legally complicated. Because the product purchase counted as payment, it triggered the lottery definition, and the licensing regime at the time required draws to allocate a portion of proceeds to charity, which most commercial campaigns could not satisfy. The 2019 Act created a clear exemption: lotteries run alongside the sale or marketing of a product are now permitted without any lottery permit or licence, provided the total prize value does not exceed €2,500, there is no charge to enter beyond the standard product purchase price, and there is no additional fee to claim the prize.
The second significant change was updated prize value thresholds for lottery permits and licences, making it more practical to run larger promotions with proper authorisation.
The third change, and the one brands should take seriously, was a significant increase in penalties. A person convicted on summary proceedings for promoting an unlicensed lottery can now face a fine of up to €5,000 and/or up to six months in prison. Conviction on indictment carries a maximum fine of €50,000 and/or up to two years in prison.
What did not change is the fundamental structure: running a lottery without the appropriate authorisation remains an offence, and the definition of a lottery is unchanged.
Once you know your total prize value and whether purchase is required to enter, the compliance path is clear. Here are the three main routes under current Irish law.
Product promotion exemption (total prizes up to €2,500). No permit or licence required. The promotion must be linked to the sale or marketing of a product, entry cannot involve a charge beyond the standard product purchase price, and prize redemption must be free. The term "product" is not defined in the Act, which creates some ambiguity about whether it covers services. Until there is clearer regulatory guidance, treating the exemption as applying to physical goods is the cautious approach.
Lottery permit (total prizes up to €5,000). Application is made to the Superintendent of An Garda Síochána for the district where the promoter is based or registered. Applications must be submitted at least 60 days before the first day on which you intend to promote the lottery.
Lottery licence (total prizes up to €30,000 per week, for periodic lotteries). Application is made to the District Court assigned to the relevant district, also at least 60 days in advance. A lottery licence comes with conditions: no more than 75% of total proceeds may be allocated to prizes, and at least 25% must be allocated to a charitable or philanthropic purpose within one month of the lottery.
Free prize draws (no prize cap). If entry is genuinely free with no purchase, payment, or other obligation required, the lottery definition does not apply at all. Free prize draws of any prize value can be run without a permit or licence. This is why so many Irish prize promotions include a free entry route, which brings us to the question of how to structure one correctly.
Published terms and conditions are not optional. Every Irish prize promotion should have them, and they need to satisfy the ASAI Code of Standards for Advertising and Marketing Communications in Ireland, which is the primary industry standard for promotional marketing practice here. The ASAI operates on a self-regulatory basis, but complaints upheld against your brand are public and reputationally damaging.
Your T&Cs should clearly cover:
The winner notification timeline is one of the most commonly missing elements we see in Irish prize promotion T&Cs. If your fulfilment process cannot meet the six-week delivery window, state the actual timeline in your T&Cs before the promotion goes live, not after.
Even with the product promotion exemption available for draws up to €2,500, many brands still choose to include a free entry route. Doing so removes the lottery classification entirely, regardless of prize value, and eliminates any question about whether the €2,500 product promotion exemption applies to your specific mechanic.
A valid free entry route must give free entrants a genuine and equal chance of winning. The most common format in Ireland is a postal entry: entrants write their name and contact details on a plain piece of paper, post it to the promoter, and are entered into the draw on the same basis as purchasers. Online free entry routes are also used, where entrants submit details through a webpage without making any purchase.
Equality of chance is the critical legal requirement. You cannot weight purchased entries more heavily than free entries. If purchased entries receive 10 chances per product and postal entries receive one, the promotion still has a practical payment element because buying dramatically increases the probability of winning. Irish law looks at the substance of the arrangement, not whether a free route exists on paper.
The free entry route must also be clearly communicated on all promotional materials, including on-pack copy, digital advertising, and the entry page. Entrants must be able to find and use it without significant effort or searching.
Collecting entry data for a prize promotion means processing personal data, and that brings the General Data Protection Regulation directly into play. The Data Protection Commission (DPC) is Ireland's supervisory authority under the GDPR, and it accounted for more than half of the €1.2 billion in GDPR fines issued across Europe in 2024, according to reporting by RTÉ News. Getting the data side of your promotion wrong creates a compliance risk that can outlast the promotion itself by years.
For administering the competition, the lawful basis for processing entrants' personal data is typically the performance of a contract. The entrant has agreed to the T&Cs of the promotion, and processing their name, contact details, and entry is necessary to run the draw and deliver prizes. You do not need a separate consent layer for this.
For any marketing purpose beyond the competition, such as adding entrants to your email list or using their data for targeted communications, you need explicit, freely given, separately obtained consent. The GDPR prohibits "forced consent," meaning you cannot make competition entry conditional on agreeing to receive marketing communications. The marketing opt-in must be a separate, clearly labelled, unticked checkbox. A pre-ticked box, or a single checkbox that covers both T&Cs acceptance and marketing consent, does not meet the standard.
On retention, the GDPR's storage limitation principle means keeping personal data only as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected. For competition administration, deleting entry data within 30 to 90 days of the draw closing is standard practice. If you intend to retain data beyond that period, disclose this in your privacy notice at the point of entry and confirm the lawful basis for the longer retention.
Every entry form or entry page should include a visible link to a full privacy notice covering: who the data controller is, what data is collected, the legal basis for processing, how long data is retained, and how entrants can exercise their rights (access, erasure, portability, and objection).
After running prize promotions for brands across FMCG, utilities, insurance, and retail, we see the same compliance gaps appearing repeatedly.
Applying UK rules to an Irish campaign. In the UK, purchase-necessary prize draws are permitted at virtually any prize value, provided no additional fee is charged beyond the product purchase. In Ireland, the equivalent exemption only covers total prizes up to €2,500. A campaign mechanic that is entirely lawful in the UK can be an unlicensed lottery in Ireland the moment the prize pool exceeds that threshold.
Using a skill question but selecting the winner by draw. Adding a trivia question to filter entries does not create a genuine competition if you then draw a winner at random from the correct answers. Under Irish law, this is likely to be treated as a lottery. A skill-based promotion that avoids lottery classification must select the winner on merit, not by chance.
Bundling marketing consent with T&Cs acceptance. A single checkbox covering both accepting the competition rules and consenting to marketing emails is not GDPR-compliant. These must be two separate, clearly labelled actions.
Missing required T&Cs elements. The most common gaps are: no free entry route details when purchase is required and prizes exceed €2,500; no stated winner notification timeline; and no mention of winner publication. Each gap creates legal exposure and a potential ASAI complaint.
Underestimating the six-week delivery rule. The ASAI Code's requirement for prizes to be delivered within six weeks of a promotion ending is frequently treated as a target rather than a default obligation. If your prize requires ordering, manufacturing, or importing, plan the fulfilment timeline before the promotion goes live and state it clearly in your T&Cs if it exceeds six weeks.
Working through this checklist before your promotion goes live will catch the most common compliance issues before they become problems:
Prize draws and sweepstakes work when they are well-designed, properly structured, and legally sound. The compliance requirements are not complicated once you understand how Irish law approaches promotional lotteries, and getting it right from the start protects your brand from regulatory complaints, ASAI rulings, and the reputational damage that comes from a non-compliant campaign. The Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Act 2019 made things considerably easier for product promotions with modest prize values, but it also made the cost of non-compliance more serious than it has ever been.
If you are planning a prize draw or sweepstake and want a team that handles both the legal framework and the operational delivery, take a look at how our sales promotions services work. We have run compliant campaigns for brands across Ireland and the UK across FMCG, utilities, insurance, and retail, and we are glad to talk through your brief. Reach out to our team to start the conversation.
Do I need a National Lottery licence to run a prize draw in Ireland?
No. The National Lottery is a separate entity operating under its own legislation, and a National Lottery licence has no relevance to commercial prize promotions. What most brand managers are actually asking is whether their promotion needs a lottery permit or licence under the Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Act 2019. If your total prize value is €2,500 or less and the draw is tied to a product promotion, no permit is required. Above that threshold, a Garda Superintendent permit or a District Court licence is required depending on the size of the prize pool.
Can I run a purchase-necessary prize draw without any permit?
Yes, but only if the total prize value does not exceed €2,500, the promotion is genuinely tied to the sale or marketing of a product, and no additional fee is charged either to enter or to claim the prize. Above €2,500, a lottery permit or lottery licence is required.
Is there a maximum prize value for a free prize draw in Ireland?
No. If entry is genuinely free with no purchase, payment, or other obligation required, the promotion sits entirely outside the lottery definition. Free prize draws of any prize value can be run without a permit or licence. The free entry route must be real, clearly communicated, and offer entrants an equal chance of winning compared to any paid entry route.
Can I bundle competition entry with marketing consent under GDPR?
No. The GDPR requires that consent for marketing communications is freely given, which means it cannot be a condition of entering a competition. You must provide two separate actions: one to accept the competition T&Cs, and a separate, unticked checkbox for marketing opt-in. Bundling the two into a single action invalidates the marketing consent.
How long can I keep competition entrant data after the draw closes?
There is no fixed legal period. The GDPR's storage limitation principle means you should retain personal data only for as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected. For competition administration, most practitioners delete entry data within 30 to 90 days of the draw closing. If you intend to keep data for longer, state this in your privacy notice at the point of entry and confirm the lawful basis for the extended retention.
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