Running Bingo and Race Nights Lawfully
The Gambling Commission rules that matter for pub bingo and race nights, and where our software stops and your responsibility starts.
This is general information, not legal advice.
The Gambling Commission rules that matter for pub bingo and race nights, and where our software stops and your responsibility starts.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Great Britain lets a pub or club run bingo without a gambling operating licence, as long as it stays small. The Gambling Commission calls this equal chance gaming, and the limits that matter are:
- A maximum stake of £5 per person per game.
- No participation fee on top of the stake.
- Adults only: no under-18s taking part.
- If combined stakes or prizes exceed £2,000 in any seven days,
the premises needs a bingo operating licence and must notify the Commission.
Free-to-enter bingo, where nobody stakes anything, sits outside all of this. A lot of venues run exactly that and put up a prize on the night.
A race night is lawful in Great Britain as a non-commercial gaming event: one run to raise money for a good cause, where the money raised does not go to private profit. Charity fundraisers, school PTAs, sports clubs and community groups are the intended users.
A venue running a race night to make money for itself is a different thing entirely and would need to be licensed. If you are not raising funds for a cause, take advice before running one for stakes.
Players must be told what the proceeds are for, and the event must not be run as a commercial betting operation.
This matters for how you set the night up. Racing has no payment processing in it at all. Phones show a read-only race card, and free picks drive the favourites board on the audience screen. There is no betting from a phone.
Where a host is taking table stakes, the app records the intent and calculates the tote: it splits the pool across first, second and third, prices everything in fractional odds, and shows the host what each place pays and the even split per winner. No stake, prize or payout passes through Let's Go Games, and we hold no client money.
So the app is a scoreboard and a calculator. Whether the event itself is lawful, and who is allowed to take part, is the organiser's responsibility.
Limits and thresholds change, and the position differs in Northern Ireland. The Gambling Commission publishes plain-English guidance:
Bingo in pubs and clubs
Running a race night or similar event