Running a competition website means daily jobs: launching competitions, watching sales against closing dates, logging free postal entries, running draws, contacting winners, answering players and checking payouts. Ticket numbers, skill question checks, instant win results and automatic draws run on the platform. A person handles the post, live draws, winner contact, support and the books. At Nera Marketing we have built 50+ UK competition websites, and one LR Luxe Competitions site processed 4,556 orders for 25,367 tickets in 23 days, about 200 orders a day.

What does running a competition website involve day to day?

Day to day, the operator keeps competitions live and selling, keeps the free entry route working and closes every draw cleanly. The work falls into six jobs. The platform carries part of each one, but every job has a step where a person checks, decides or replies.

1. Launch and schedule competitions: prize, ticket price, ticket count, closing date and any instant win prize table.
2. Watch sales against closing dates, so the next competition is ready before the current one closes.
3. Open the post and log free postal entries against the right competition.
4. Run the draw, automatically or live, and publish the winning ticket number.
5. Contact the winner and start prize delivery.
6. Answer players, check payouts and keep the marketing going.

Across the sites Nera Marketing supports, the platform does the counting and a person does the judgement. That split is designed in when we build competition websites for UK operators.

The weekly rhythm of a UK competition business

The typical pattern we see is a weekly cycle: daily checks on post, sales, support and payouts, one or more draw nights, a weekly marketing and compliance review, and monthly books. Your own days will move with your draw schedule.

When	Job	Done by
Every day	Open the post and log free postal entries	Person
Every day	Check sales against closing dates and plan the next launch	Person, from the admin dashboard
Every day	Clear the support inbox	Person
Every day	Check the previous day’s payout reached the bank	Person
Launch days	Build and schedule new competitions, check instant win prize tables	Person
Draw nights	Automatic draws fire on sell-out or on the closing date	Platform
Draw nights	Live draws on Facebook or TikTok	Person on camera
Draw nights	Winners page updates once the winner is confirmed	Platform
Weekly	Review accounts flagged for possible harm	Person
Weekly	Review ads, plan social posts, Lives and the email campaign	Person
Weekly	Check the free entry route is visible on every live competition	Person
Monthly	Reconcile the books against payment provider settlements	Person or bookkeeper
Quarterly	Internal Voluntary Code compliance review	Person

Daily checks and draw nights

The daily checks take discipline because nothing forces them. With the payment provider we recommend, funds settle to your bank daily, so a missing payout shows within a day if you look. An automatic draw needs nobody present. A live draw needs a presenter and a clean entry list, and our guide to running a Facebook Live draw covers that night.

Weekly, monthly and quarterly reviews

The Voluntary Code, in effect since May 2026, asks operators to monitor player activity and to review their own compliance regularly. It does not set a frequency. Our clause-by-clause Voluntary Code guide suggests weekly reviews of flagged accounts and a quarterly compliance review, moving to monthly for high-volume operators. Once a year, renew the ICO data protection fee if it applies to you, because every entry collects personal data.

For the monthly books, reconcile against the payment provider’s settlement batches, one figure per payout. A busy site takes thousands of small orders a week, so keep the per-ticket detail as an export and leave it out of the accounting software. VAT has its own rules, set out in our guide to how VAT applies to paid entries. We are a competition website agency, not accountants or tax advisers, so take VAT decisions with your accountant.

Launching and scheduling competitions

Launching is the biggest recurring job and the source of most avoidable problems. Each competition needs a prize, ticket price, ticket count, closing date, any minimum ticket count and, for instant wins, a prize table. Build competitions on a laptop rather than a phone, and check every setting before you start the competition.

Upload prize images at 1500 by 1200 pixels, so they sit correctly on the competition card and the competition page. Launch a new site, or a big competition, on a weekday morning, when your developer is on hand if anything needs fixing.

The settings behind most support requests

Instant win setup is the largest single theme in the support requests Nera Marketing handles. Almost every case comes down to a setting:

• The instant win prize file holds only the winning ticket numbers. Any number not in the file is a non-winning ticket, so there is no need to add rows for losing tickets.
• Save the competition after switching instant wins on. A ticked box on an unsaved competition does nothing.
• Site-credit prizes need the credit value entered for the wallet, or a winner sees a win with nothing in their balance.
• A competition that counts down in preview is still a draft until it is started.
• Spin to win prizes are set up as segments on the wheel, in the competition’s Spin To Win tab. The instant win prize table is only for instant wins, so wheel prizes do not go there.

Our guide to instant win mechanics covers how the prize table drives the odds.

Minimum ticket counts and unique winners

A competition can close without a valid draw for two reasons: it missed its minimum ticket count, or unique-winner logic was on and too few different people entered to cover the prizes. In one case we diagnosed, a competition sold 25 tickets with 10 prizes, but only 3 different customers had entered. Set the minimum to 1 unless you have a reason to raise it, and keep unique winners for competitions where likely entrants far outnumber the prizes.

The other common question is whether an automatic draw fires on sell-out or on the closing date. Either, chosen per competition.

Plan so the closing date holds

Size each competition so it can draw on its stated date. The DCMS Voluntary Code says operators should not provide a prize of lower value because of low ticket sales, change the date a draw ends, or cancel a draw because of low ticket sales. The CAP Code’s rules on promotional marketing also say closing dates must not change unless unavoidable circumstances beyond the promoter’s control make it necessary. The practical answer is in the launch settings: a realistic ticket count, a realistic price and a sensible run length.

Set the site to London time before you set a closing time

Every closing time, countdown and draw time on your site comes from one setting: the WordPress time zone, under Settings, then General. Choose the city, London. Do not choose a UTC offset such as UTC+1.

A UTC offset is a fixed number, so it does not move when the clocks change. London does. UK clocks go back an hour on the last Sunday in October and forward on the last Sunday in March. A site on a fixed offset is an hour out all winter.

We saw it on a site we built. The operator set a competition to close at 9:30pm and the competition page showed 8:30pm, because the site was set to UTC+1 rather than London. Switching the setting to London corrected every competition at once.

An hour out is not a display problem. Entries get cut off early, or taken after the advertised close, and both lead to refunds and complaints. The closing time is part of your terms, and the CAP Code’s rules on promotional marketing expect it to be clear and to hold. Players have to be able to rely on the time they were told.

Your ads and messages have to match the site too. If an ad, an email or a push says a competition ends tonight at 9pm, the site has to close at 9pm. Check three places whenever a closing time matters:

• The site. The time zone is London, and the competition page shows the closing time you set.
• Meta. Create the ad account on London time, because the time zone is hard to change afterwards. Ad schedules and end dates run on the ad account’s time zone. An account on another zone keeps an “ends tonight” ad running after the competition has closed, or stops it early.
• Email, SMS and push. Check the time zone in each platform, and send yourself a test of the closing-soon message before the first live one goes out.

If a competition runs across a clock change, check its closing time on the competition page, and in any scheduled ads, the day after the clocks move.

Who checks postal entries and skill answers?

The operator does, in two different ways. Skill question answers are checked automatically at checkout, before payment is taken. Free postal entries arrive on paper, so a person has to open, check, log and number each one and give it the same chance of winning as a paid entry.

The Gambling Commission says the free route must be no more expensive or less convenient than the paid route, and prizes must be allocated without treating the two routes differently. A workable process looks like this:

1. Use a postal address where the post is opened every day.
2. Check each entry against the free entry rules in your terms, and apply them the same way every time.
3. Log the entrant against the right competition and give them ticket numbers from the same pool as paid entries.
4. Confirm the entry to the entrant.
5. Keep the card, or a scan of it, with the day it arrived.
6. Follow a written policy for entries that arrive after the competition has closed, and say in your terms when postal entries must arrive.

Timing matters. For a live draw, postal entrants go onto the draw list with their numbers. For an automatic draw, they must be on the site before the competition closes, or the draw runs without them. One operator wrote to us after two postal entries landed in their PO box the morning after the competitions had ended. The Voluntary Code asks operators to allow sufficient time for the free entry route, and a postal deadline in your terms helps you show it.

Skill answers need less daily work. The Nera Shield compliance layer checks the answer before payment and logs it. The operator writes a question that genuinely filters entrants and tests it after any change, because we have seen skill question logic mark correct answers as wrong. Check the free entry route weekly too. One operator on another provider found their free postal entry button had been removed by a page-builder edit after tickets were already on sale.

Draw night, winners and prizes

Draw night is either automatic or live. Automatic draws fire when a competition sells out or reaches its closing date. Live draws run on Facebook or TikTok with someone on camera. Afterwards, the operator publishes the winning ticket number, contacts the winner privately and starts prize delivery.

Show winners from the very first one. Hiding names or ticket numbers until a competition has several winners backfires when there are few prizes: the threshold is never reached and players start to think the draw is rigged. Winner announcements are also your strongest marketing moment. On one operator’s app, winner announcement pushes reached a 1.55% click rate, against 0.19% to 0.43% for generic competition listings.

The CAP Code expects prizes to be awarded as described and normally within 30 days, and expects promoters to publish or make available information showing that a valid award took place. Build both into the routine: a winners page that updates on every draw, and a delivery record for every prize. Draw evidence, winner checks and prize delivery each deserve a written process before the first draw night.

Support, refunds and chargebacks

Player support is mostly about tickets, wins and emails: where are my numbers, did I win, why has my confirmation not arrived. Refunds follow your published terms. Chargebacks are answered through your payment provider using your order and entry records, so those records need to be complete.

The player-facing problems that operators bring to our support desk tend to be these:

• A win or no-win result that only appears after a page refresh. It should show at the point of purchase, on every device.
• Winners not seeing a notification on screen or by email.
• Site credit not appearing in the wallet after an instant win.
• Order confirmation emails not arriving. One operator thought sales had stopped. The sales were all there. The notification emails were the problem.

Write refund and cancellation rules into your terms before you need them, and apply them the same way every time. Our guide to refund and cancellation terms covers what to include. For chargebacks, answer inside the provider’s deadline with the order, the ticket numbers allocated and the entry record. Clear terms and clear checkout wording reduce how many you receive.

Two Voluntary Code jobs sit in the inbox too: a transparent complaints process, and acting on account suspension requests in a timely manner, for at least six months, with no entries and no marketing during that time.

Marketing jobs that repeat every week

Marketing work repeats weekly: winner posts and videos, Lives, one email campaign and an ads review. Automated email flows, such as draw reminders and abandoned entry recovery, run on their own once they are set up. Review ads once a week, on enough data to mean something.

• Winner content first. Winner announcements are the most engaged messages we see across email and push, so every draw should produce a post or a short video.
• Lives. LR Luxe Competitions runs its draws as TikTok Lives and took £30,000 in its first month after launch. For a starting point, our guide to a sustainable TikTok Live cadence suggests three Lives a week of 30 to 60 minutes.
• Email. Set up the six automated email flows once. The weekly campaign is the only manual part.
• Ads. An ad set needs roughly 20 purchases before its cost per purchase means anything. Check spend against bank statements, because Ads Manager figures drift. Use ads for new players and email and SMS for existing ones. Before an ad promises a closing time, check it against the competition page.

What Nera Engine automates, and what still needs a person

Nera Engine automates the counting: ticket numbers, skill question checks, instant win results, automatic draws, the winners page and triggered emails. Judgement stays with people. Postal entries, live draws, winner contact, prize delivery, support, refunds and chargebacks need a person, and so does the weekly review of anything the system flags.

Job	What the platform does	What a person does
Ticket numbers	Allocates ticket numbers to every paid entry	Spot-checks entries against paid orders
Skill question	Checks the answer at checkout before payment	Writes the question, tests it after changes
Instant wins	Shows the result at purchase, credits the wallet	Builds and checks the prize table
Draws	Draws automatically on sell-out or closing date	Runs live draws on camera
Winners page	Updates once a winner is confirmed	Confirms the winner
Email	Sends confirmations and triggered flows through your email platform	Writes the weekly campaign
Postal entries	Includes logged entries in the draw	Opens, checks and logs every entry
Player protection	Applies spend limits and account suspensions once they are set up	Reviews flagged accounts, actions requests
Support, refunds, chargebacks	Keeps the order and entry records	Writes every reply
Books	Exports order and ticket detail, while the payment provider settles one figure per payout	Reconciles each month

The full feature list sits on the admin side of Nera Engine. Behind the platform, Nera Marketing is contactable seven days a week, early morning to late evening, with automated monitoring overnight. Build faults are fixed free under the 12 month warranty that comes with every build.

When does a solo operator need staff?

A solo operator needs help when the daily jobs stop fitting into the day: post left unopened, support waiting until the next morning, Lives skipped, or no competition ready when the current one closes. Which job to hand over first depends on where your hours actually go.

Watch for these signs:

• More draw nights each week than you can present yourself.
• Postal entries arriving faster than you can log them.
• Support messages still open the following day.
• Launches slipping, leaving a gap with nothing live to enter.
• Live draws that need one person on camera and another on the admin.

Before hiring, log a fortnight of your own time by job, and the first job to hand over usually becomes clear. Give each helper their own admin login so every action is traceable. Train on the staging site, which does not copy across to the live site.

Growth multiplies every job on the list. Rusboy Competitions processed more than £4.5M in competition sales in its first year and grew from under 2,000 players to over 40,000. The counting side of that growth sits in the platform, which Nera Marketing builds to scale with the player count. The people side stays with the operator, and the signals above say when to act.