How to Spot a Fake Competition (UK Red Flags Checklist)

If you cannot find a registered company name and number on the page, stop there. That single check settles most cases in under a minute. This guide covers the red flags that are decisive, the ones that are genuinely ambiguous, and what to do if you have already handed over money.

By Mitch Barnes · Last reviewed 7 September 2026

NetCompetitions is a UK prize competition operator, so this is a competition site telling you how to check competition sites. Run all of it on us.

Start here: the sixty second check

Scroll to the bottom of the page or open the About section. You are looking for a company name and a registration number.

If there is nothing, you are dealing with either a scam or an operation so casual that the difference will not help you. If there is something, put the name into the Companies House register and check it exists, is active, and has filings that are up to date.

Most fake competitions fail at that point. The rest of this guide is for the ones that do not. If a word on a site is unfamiliar and the site does not define it either, our glossary of UK competition terms probably will.

Three different problems people call "fake"

Lumping them together is why advice on this topic is usually useless. They need different responses.

• An outright scam. Takes your money, or your details, and delivers nothing. Often no real competition exists at all.
• An unlicensed lottery. A paid draw with no genuine skill element and no free entry route. Illegal, and the operator may not realise it, but a prize might still arrive.
• A legal competition that is poor value. Real prize, real draw, terrible odds you were never shown. Not fake, not illegal, and still worth walking away from.

Our guide to checking whether a competition site is legit covers the legal position in full. This post is about spotting the first category quickly.

Decisive red flags

Any one of these on its own is enough to walk away.

• No company name or registration number anywhere on the site. Legitimate operators are companies, and companies are on a public register.
• No free entry route at all. UK competitions have to offer a way in that does not cost money. A paid draw with no free route and no real skill question should not exist.
• Payment by bank transfer, gift card, cryptocurrency or a payment app. Legitimate operators take card payments, because card payments come with chargeback rights. A seller steering you away from cards is steering you away from your own protection.
• A fee to release a prize. No genuine UK operator charges you to receive something you have won. Not a delivery fee, not an admin fee, not a tax payment. This is the single most reliable sign of a scam.
• The competition cannot be found anywhere except one social media post. Search the prize and the brand name. A real competition has a page you can reach without going through the advert.

Strong flags, worth stopping for

Not conclusive alone, but two or three together and you have your answer.

• No total ticket count published. If you cannot see how many entries exist, nobody can tell you your odds, including the operator.
• A winners page that is empty, undated, or eighteen months stale. Look at the most recent entry, not the number of entries.
• Comments turned off, or full of unanswered complaints. Read how the operator replies. Silence is a choice.
• An account created in the last month running high-value prizes. Check the join date on the social profile.
• Terms that do not say what happens if the draw does not sell out. A real operator has thought about this and written it down.
• Prize photos that are stock images or lifted from a manufacturer. Reverse image search takes ten seconds.

Flags that look bad but are not

If you can't find a registered company name and number on the page, stop there. That single check settles most cases in under a minute. The rest is for the sites that survive it: the red flags that are decisive, the ones that are genuinely ambiguous, and what to do if you've already handed over money.

By Mitch Barnes · Last reviewed 7 September 2026

Full disclosure: we run one of these sites. Run every check here on us.

Start here: the sixty second check

Scroll to the bottom of the page, or open the About section. You're looking for two things: a company name, and a registration number. It takes about as long as reading this sentence, and it is the check that settles more cases than every other check on this page put together.

If there's nothing, you're dealing with either a scam or an operation so casual that the difference won't help you. If there's something, put the name into the Companies House register and check it exists, is active, and has filings that are up to date.

Most fake competitions fail at that point. The ones that don't are the harder cases. If a word on a site is unfamiliar and the site doesn't define it either, our glossary of UK competition terms probably will.

Three different problems people call "fake"

Lumping them together is why advice on this topic is usually useless. They need different responses.

• An outright scam. Takes your money, or your details, and delivers nothing. Often no real competition exists at all.
• An unlicensed lottery. A paid draw with no genuine skill element and no free entry route. Illegal, and the operator may not realise it, but a prize might still arrive.
• A legal competition that is poor value. Real prize, real draw, terrible odds you were never shown. Not fake, not illegal, and still worth walking away from.

Our guide to checking whether a competition site is legit covers the legal position in full.

Decisive red flags

Any one of these on its own is enough to walk away.

• No company name or registration number anywhere on the site. Legitimate operators are companies, and companies are on a public register.
• No free entry route at all. UK competitions have to offer a way in that doesn't cost money. A paid draw with no free route and no real skill question shouldn't exist.
• Payment by bank transfer, gift card, cryptocurrency or a payment app. Legitimate operators take card payments, because card payments come with chargeback rights. A seller steering you away from cards is steering you away from your own protection.
• A fee to release a prize. No genuine UK operator charges you to receive something you've won. Not a delivery fee, not an admin fee, not a tax payment. This is the single most reliable sign of a scam.
• The competition can't be found anywhere except one social media post. Search the prize and the brand name. A real competition has a page you can reach without going through the advert.

Strong flags, worth stopping for

Not conclusive alone. Two or three together and you have your answer.

• No total ticket count published. If you can't see how many entries exist, nobody can tell you your odds, including the operator.
• A winners page that's empty, undated, or eighteen months stale. Look at the most recent entry, not the number of entries.
• Comments turned off, or full of unanswered complaints. Read how the operator replies. Silence is a choice.
• An account created in the last month running high-value prizes. Check the join date on the social profile.
• Terms that don't say what happens if the draw doesn't sell out. A real operator has thought about this and written it down.
• Prize photos that are stock images or lifted from a manufacturer. Reverse image search takes ten seconds.

Flags that look bad but are not

This is where most advice on this topic goes wrong. Worth being honest about, too, because we were new once and several of these described us.

• No winners yet. A site that opened last month hasn't run a draw. That's a reason to start small, not evidence of anything.
• A recently incorporated company. Every legitimate operator was recently incorporated at some point.
• Very low ticket prices. Cheap entries are how low-value prizes work. The number that matters is the ticket total, not the price.
• Not being on the government's voluntary code signatory list. The code is voluntary and only came into force in May 2026. Plenty of legitimate operators aren't on it yet.

Treat these as reasons to spend ten pounds instead of two hundred, not reasons to run.

Social media specific tells

Most fake competitions in the UK live on Facebook and Instagram, not on their own websites.

The cloned account. A copy of a real operator's page, with a near-identical handle, posting a competition the real operator is also running. Check two things: the follower count, and the join date against the account you already follow.

The engagement trap. Share, tag three friends, comment, follow. A real competition can ask for a follow. What it can't do is make the prize depend on you spreading the post to people who never asked for it. A page built entirely from that pattern is harvesting reach to sell later.

The claim message. The one that actually costs people money. You're told you've won something you may not remember entering, then asked for a small payment or your bank details to release it. This is the advance fee pattern, and it's where nearly all the real losses in this category happen. Nobody who owes you a prize needs your money first.

What to do if you have already paid

• Ring your card issuer today. A chargeback for goods you never received is usually the fastest way to get your money back, and there are time limits. Section 75, which makes the card company jointly liable, only covers credit card purchases over £100, so for a competition ticket chargeback is the one that matters.
• Report it. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Report Fraud is the national reporting service, online or on 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, report to Police Scotland on 101.
• Complain to the ASA if the advertising was misleading. The CAP Code sets rules on how prizes and odds are described.
• Stop engaging, and keep everything. Screenshots of the advert, the terms as they were, your payment confirmation, every message. Pages get deleted and terms get edited.
• Never send more money. A request for a further fee to release the first payment is the same scam continuing.

How NetCompetitions handles this

Every check here is one you should be able to run on any operator, including us.

NetCompetitions opens later this year. Until then we're building to those standards, and to the requirements of the industry's voluntary code:

• A company number in the footer, against a live Companies House record
• The total ticket count published before entry
• The free postal route linked from every competition page
• Winners published with names, photos and dates, with their consent

Run the checks on us when we open. You can read how it works in the meantime.

The bottom line

Nearly every fake competition fails the sixty second check, and the ones that survive it usually fail on the free entry route or the payment method. Scams are the easy part. The harder skill is resisting the assumption that anything unfamiliar is one, and a new operator with no winners page and a low price is just new. Spend small. Check the company, and treat a demand for money to release a prize as the end of the conversation.