Good practice now has a written standard.

What the Code is

The Code was published on 20 November 2025. It focuses on Great Britain prize draws where the result is determined by chance and participants can choose between paid and free entry routes.

Where an operator combines that free draw route with a skill element, the Code says the free draw part of the business should still be covered. It does not cover businesses operating solely genuine skill based prize competitions.

What the Code is not

It is not a new Gambling Act. DCMS explicitly describes the Code as voluntary. It is not legislation. It does not replace consumer law. It does not replace advertising law. Its purpose is to raise standards around protection, transparency and accountability.

Voluntary does not mean meaningless. Law and good practice are simply different things.

Implementation

Signatories were given six months from publication to implement the Code, with an implementation deadline of 20 May 2026. Operators joining after that date are expected to comply with the Code from the outset of becoming a signatory.

Code checked: 19 September 2026. This is a living source, and the signatory list has continued changing during 2026.

Player protection needs transaction level controls

The Code contains expectations around player protection. This is where Beaver's architecture becomes relevant, because the platform already has Live or Built controls for player set spending limits, operator spending caps, take a break, self exclusion, credit card controls, care flags, intervention workflow and marketing suppression.

No vague "fully compliant with the Code" claim. Instead: this provision maps to this Beaver control, and this is its current status.

Transparency

Tell people how the promotion works. The Code is explicitly aimed at increasing transparency as well as player protection. Beaver's relevant capabilities include published odds, free entry presentation, public winner records, verifiable draws and audit evidence.

Transparency is more useful when the customer can inspect something.

Draw integrity

Live Beaver's draw engine commits the entry list, names future public randomness, refuses changed entries and allows public reproduction of the result.

See how Beaver verifies a draw

Credit cards

Beaver contains Built controls for rolling credit card spending and for blocking credit cards on instant win products. The payment architecture has not yet been validated against production merchant credentials.

Control logic: Built. Production evidence: not yet proven.

Instant wins

Live Beaver has sealed instant win allocation. However, the platform setting intended to cap instant wins as a proportion of the operator's portfolio is currently switch only, so we do not claim Beaver automatically enforces that provision today.

Evidence

Show what was active, not what the brochure promised. Beaver's Live Evidence Pack can produce a dated record of the controls active during a period: one of the practical ways an operator can retain evidence around its platform configuration.

Explore Compliance Evidence Packs