Regulatory changes around charity and sports clubs lotteries in Ireland won’t kick in for quite some time according to the country’s newly formed gambling regulator.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Anne-Marie Caulfield, Chief Executive of the Gambling Regulator Authority of Ireland (GRAI), said that licensing requirements around this topic will be introduced for a few years.
Ireland’s latest piece of legislation around betting and gaming includes some requirements around charities and sports organisations conducting lotteries and raffles. It also created the GRAI, which will govern all forms of gambling in the country from betting to casinos to lotteries.
As made clear by Caulfield, the regulator is not yet concerned with implementing these, but eventually organisations will have to place a €2,000 limit on prize money that can be offered by lotteries and raffles.
For charities and some sports clubs, lotteries and raffles perform a useful joint function of both raising revenue while also engaging with donors and supporters, respectively.
Smaller clubs in the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), Ireland’s most widely followed domestic sports league, may find lotteries particularly useful.
Like many sports clubs, GAA members have faced financial difficulties in recent years, with sponsorship revenue notably down significantly in 2023.
Holding events like lotteries is a useful counterbalance to this. However, clubs need to be aware of when a lottery or raffle crosses a line between being a community event and a form of betting business.
The GRAI is focused on this as it looks to counter problem gambling in Ireland, which the authority’s Chief Executive stated is ‘10 times higher than had been previously thought’ in her recent Irish Examiner interview.
However, as made clear in the interview, dealing with privately held lotteries and raffles is hardly on the regulator’s agenda. For now it is far more concerned with ensuring that operators strictly abide by social responsibility requirements, while it is also contouring advertising.
Companies that offer lotteries as part of a broader betting offering – like Flutter Entertainment’s brand Paddy Power, for example – will still need to take note of this though, with the regulator planning on conducting vetting of gaming executives as one key policy.
“As part of that vetting process, we will be asking who the responsible individuals are and vetting them individually,” Caulfield told the newspaper. “Obviously then subsequently, if there’s an issue, we’ll be tracking back to that.”