Moving to 18+ is now complete

As we’re sure you’ve seen by now, the UK government has unveiled its long-awaited white paper titled "High Stakes: Gambling Reform for the Digital Age". This follows the government's review paper on the UK Gambling Act, which was published on 8 December 2020.

What is changing?

There are various recommendations that have been put forward which Gatherwell will be considering. However, the most noteworthy recommendation impacting the charitable lotteries sector is the UK government’s challenge for operators to move to a legal age limit of 18 for lottery ticket purchases.

What is Gatherwell’s approach?

For those of you who may not know, Gatherwell is the ELM (External Lottery Manager) who runs the operation of the lottery behind the scenes, so have been implementing the required changes.

Although it remains legal in the near term for 16 and 17-year-old supporters to continue to purchase tickets for charitable lotteries, we have decided to transition to a minimum legal age of 18 across all lotteries managed by Gatherwell ahead of any legislative changes.

These changes have now been completed, and supporters under the age of 18 are no longer able to buy tickets on Gatherwell lottery platforms.

Please be reassured that this change will have a very minimal impact on overall lottery fundraising. Across all Gatherwell-managed lotteries, we have only 75 registered supporters that are under 18, which equates to 0.014% of total player numbers.

How have Gatherwell handled the transition?

All promotional material along with the Game Rules on the website has been updated. We have also contacted all supporters who are under 18 to inform them that unfortunately their tickets have been cancelled, with a nudge for them to re-sign up for the lottery sometime after their 18th birthday.

If you have any questions please contact the “support@” email address.