Giveaway Rules Ireland: The €2,500 Prize Limit

You have probably been told that a giveaway is the cheapest marketing a small business can run. Post it, watch the comments stack up, pull a name out of the pile, done. The prize costs what it costs and everything else is free.

Most of that is true. One part of it is not, and it is the part with a number attached.

Under Irish law, a promotion that people have to buy something to enter is a lottery. Section 27A of the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956, inserted by the 2019 Amendment Act, exempts that kind of promotion from the licensing regime only while the total value of the prizes stays at €2,500 or under ^[2]. Cross the line and you need a permit from a Garda Superintendent, applied for at least 60 days before the first day of the promotion. Sixty days. Not sixty hours.

A shop owner asked me about this on a call last week, three weeks out from a launch, prize already bought.

What the Act Actually Counts as a Lottery

The definition is older and broader than most owners expect. The Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956 says a lottery "includes all competitions for money or money's worth involving guesses or estimates of future events or of past events the results of which are not yet ascertained or not yet generally known" ^[1].

Read that again with your last promotion in mind. Guess the weight of the cake. Count the beans in the jar. Predict the final score. All of it lands inside the statutory definition, and section 26 of the Act, as replaced by the 2019 legislation, states plainly that a person shall not promote a lottery unless they hold a permit or licence that is in force ^[2].

The Act does not spell out a free entry exemption in those words. What it does spell out, clearly, is a safe harbour for the promotion most businesses actually run.

Your promotion	What the Act requires	Lead time
Genuinely free to enter, any prize value	No permit or licence regime engaged	None
Entry tied to buying a product, prizes €2,500 or under	Section 27A exemption, nothing to apply for	None
Prizes above €2,500, up to €5,000 in a week	Lottery permit from a Garda Superintendent	60 days
Prizes above €5,000, up to €30,000 in a week	Lottery licence from the District Court	60 days

Genuinely Free to Enter

Where nobody pays anything to take part, there is no contribution from participants and the licensing regime is not what you are worrying about. The practical test is whether the free route is real. If there is a paid route and a free route, the free one has to be obvious and carry the same chance of winning, not be buried in a footnote as a technicality.

Tied to a Purchase, €2,500 or Under

This is the everyday promotion. Section 27A exempts a lottery run "in conjunction with the selling or marketing of a particular product" where the total prize value is no more than €2,500 and there is no charge to take part beyond buying the product itself, and no charge to redeem the prize ^[2]. So the €200 hamper going to anyone who spends thirty euro in the shop is covered, and you get on with your day. No form, no fee, no waiting.

Above €2,500: the Permit

A lottery permit comes from the Superintendent of the Garda district where you are based. The 2019 Act sets the boundaries: each ticket at €10 or less, total prizes in any week at €5,000 or less, application at least 60 days before the promotion starts, and a decision back within 28 days of the application ^[2].

Take a garden centre in Roscommon putting a ride-on mower worth around three thousand euro into a spring draw, entry with any purchase over fifty euro. That promotion is over the section 27A line by a few hundred euro. In practice, the owner has two sensible options: drop the prize to something under the ceiling, or open a genuinely free entry route alongside the purchase route. What is not an option is deciding in March to run it in April.

Above €5,000: the Licence

Beyond the permit ceiling you are applying to the District Court for a lottery licence, with total weekly prizes capped at €30,000, or €360,000 where a single lottery runs once a year ^[2]. Also 60 days' notice. Very few owner-run businesses will ever need this, but it is worth knowing the ladder exists, because the step you are standing on determines how early you have to start.

What Getting It Wrong Actually Costs

The offence is real. Section 44 of the Act, as replaced in 2019, makes promoting a lottery without a permit or licence punishable on summary conviction by a class A fine or up to six months, and on indictment by a fine of up to €50,000 or two years ^[2]. A class A fine is capped at €5,000 under the Fines Act 2010 ^[6].

Nobody expects a squad car over a hamper. The realistic exposure sits somewhere else entirely.

Separately, the Consumer Protection Act 2007 makes it a prohibited commercial practice to operate a competition or prize promotion "without awarding the prizes described or reasonable equivalents", and to create the impression that a consumer has won a prize where there is no prize, or where claiming it requires them to make a payment or incur a loss ^[4].

Think about how a promotion actually goes wrong. Entries were thinner than you hoped, so you quietly pushed the closing date out by a fortnight. Or the prize you advertised sold out and you substituted something cheaper without saying so. The person who spent forty euro to enter and lost noticed both. They complain, the complaint is upheld, and the decision is published with your business name in it. You cannot delete that. It sits there, indexed, long after the campaign it came from is forgotten.

The Terms Nobody Writes Until Somebody Complains

The Advertising Standards Code covers promotional marketing in detail, and section 5 is where the workable checklist lives. Entry conditions should set out the closing date, any age, eligibility or geographic restrictions, limits on entries or prizes, proof of purchase requirements, the criteria for judging entries, a full and accurate description of the prizes, whether a cash alternative can be substituted, how and when winners will be notified, how results will be published, who owns copyright in the entries, and whether the winner might face a tax liability ^[3].

Four of those rules do more work than the rest.

The closing date is fixed. It should appear in every advertisement and on every entry form, and a poor response is not an acceptable basis for extending the promotion or withholding prizes unless you reserved that right at the outset ^[3]. The extension you were planning is the rule you would break first.
Winners get published. Promoters should either publish, or make available on request, the name and county of residence of prize-winners ^[3]. Decide now how you will do that, because asking a winner for permission afterwards is a conversation that goes badly when they say no.
Six weeks is the outside limit. Unless stated in advance, prize-winners should receive their prizes no more than six weeks after the promotion ends ^[3]. If your prize is a service you deliver in the summer, say so before entries open.
Someone independent watches the draw. Where a prize promotion involves a draw, an independent observer should supervise it so that entries enjoy equal chances, and where judging is subjective the panel needs at least one member independent of the promoter ^[3].

For years I told owners that a giveaway was the cheapest lead generation going, and I never once asked what was in the prize or where the terms were written. Right about the cost per lead. Wrong about everything that happens after the closing date.

The same promotion, run two ways: entries loose in a comment thread, or entries held somewhere you control.

The Entrant List Is the Real Prize, and It Comes With Strings

Be honest about why the giveaway is happening. The hamper is not the point. Your list is, and this is exactly where well-run promotions quietly fall over.

Electronic direct marketing in Ireland needs opt-in consent under Regulation 13 of the ePrivacy Regulations, as the Data Protection Commission sets out in its guidance for organisations ^[5]. Consent has to be freely given, which means it cannot be the price of admission. Bolting "by entering you agree to receive our newsletter" into your terms does not create consent. It creates a list you are not entitled to email.

The fix takes about a minute. One unticked box, worded separately from the entry itself, with entry working perfectly well whether or not it is ticked. Keep a record of who ticked it and when. If you want the longer version of how that list should be built and maintained, our guide to building an email list your business actually owns covers the mechanics.

Skip the box and the arithmetic is bleak. Four hundred entries, four hundred email addresses, and no lawful basis to send any of them a single message. That is a giveaway that cost you a prize and returned nothing.

Where the Entry Page Should Live

Now the practical question, and the one I get asked most: does the entry happen on the platform, or on your own site?

Running it natively is easy, and easy has real value. Comment on the post, tag the friend, done. The friction is near zero and the reach on day one is something your own domain cannot match.

It also has three problems that only show up later.

Meta's own promotions policies prohibit using personal timelines and friend connections as the entry mechanic, so the "share this to your profile to enter" version that half the country runs is already outside the platform rules, and those policies require you to state that the promotion is not associated with, sponsored or administered by Meta. Second, a comment thread is a terrible entry register. It reorders, it hides replies, it loses edits, and it is not a record you would want to rely on if a losing entrant asks how the draw was run. Third, the post has a shelf life of about two days, after which it is gone and so is every trace of the promotion.

An entry page on your own domain fixes the register and the shelf life. The terms sit at a permanent URL you can point to from the social post, the email, and the poster in the window. Entries arrive as structured records with timestamps. The page keeps ranking for the next promotion, and the consent tick box is yours to design rather than a platform's. On a properly managed WordPress site this is a page and a form, not a project, which is the sort of thing everything-included hosting at €60 a year is supposed to make unremarkable.

That structural point is the same one we make about why a Facebook page is not a business website, and a promotion is where the difference stops being theoretical and starts being evidential.

One thing your own entry page cannot do: make you an acceptable judge of your own draw. Hosting the form yourself gives you a clean, timestamped list. It does not satisfy the Code's expectation of an independent observer supervising the draw, or an independent judge where selection is subjective. Your server can prove what came in. It cannot vouch for how you picked.

And the concession, because it matters here. If the prize is a fifty euro voucher, entry is genuinely free, and you are talking to people who already follow you, run it in the comments and enjoy your afternoon. Building a landing page for that is work with no return. The threshold where this changes is roughly where the prize gets valuable enough that somebody who loses might care how it was decided.

Five Things to Settle Before You Post the Giveaway

Price the prize. Add up everything you are giving away, including any runner-up prizes, and see which side of €2,500 you land on if entry requires a purchase.
Pick the entry route. Decide whether entry is genuinely free or tied to a purchase, and if you need both, make the free route equal and visible rather than technically present.
Publish the terms before the first entry. Closing date, eligibility, judging, prize description, notification, and how winners will be named. A permanent page, not a comment.
Separate the marketing consent. An unticked box with its own wording, and an entry that works whether or not anyone ticks it.
Record the draw. Fix how the winner is selected, who observes it, and how you will evidence it a month later when somebody asks.

Where That Leaves You

Giveaways work. They are still among the cheapest ways to get a few hundred local people to pay attention to a small business, and nothing above changes that.

What changes is the twenty minutes beforehand. Two numbers to check, one page of terms to publish, one tick box to keep separate, and one decision about where entries land. Settle those and the promotion is genuinely low risk, which is what everybody assumed it was in the first place.

Your next one starts with the prize tag, not the caption.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a permit to run a giveaway in Ireland?

Not if the total prize value is €2,500 or less and the promotion runs in conjunction with selling or marketing a product, with no charge to enter beyond buying that product and no charge to claim the prize. Section 27A of the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956, inserted by the 2019 Amendment Act, covers that situation. Above €2,500 you need a lottery permit from a Garda Superintendent, applied for at least 60 days before the promotion starts.

Does a free prize draw need a licence in Ireland?

The Act does not set out a free entry exemption in those words, but the long-standing reading is that a draw nobody pays to enter sits outside the licensing regime, because there is no contribution from participants. Keep the free route genuine, obvious, and equal in chance to any paid route. If any part of your promotion requires a purchase, treat the prize ceiling as live, and take legal advice on anything substantial.

Can I require people to follow my page and tag a friend to enter?

Meta's own promotions policies prohibit using personal timelines and friend connections as the entry mechanic, so requiring a share to a personal profile or a tag is against the platform rules even where it is common practice. The policies also require you to state that the promotion is not associated with, sponsored or administered by Meta. Those rules belong to the platform and can change without notice, which is one reason serious promotions send people to a page the business controls.

Can I add competition entrants to my email list?

Only with separate consent. Regulation 13 of the ePrivacy Regulations requires opt-in consent for electronic direct marketing, and consent bundled into a condition of entry is not freely given. Use an unticked box with its own wording, make entry work whether or not it is ticked, and record which entrants ticked it and when.

What has to be in the terms and conditions of a competition?

The Advertising Standards Code lists the entry conditions a promoter should set out: the closing date, any age, eligibility or geographic restrictions, limits on entries or prizes, proof of purchase requirements, judging criteria, a full and accurate description of the prizes, whether a cash alternative can be substituted, how and when winners will be notified, how results will be published, who owns copyright in the entries, and whether the winner may be liable for tax.

How quickly do I have to give out the prize?

Unless you state otherwise in advance, the Code says prize-winners should receive their prizes no more than six weeks after the promotion has ended. A poor response is not a valid reason to extend the closing date or withhold prizes unless you explicitly reserved that right at the outset.