On 15 January 2025 the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about a Royalux Competitions prize draw. This page sets out what it ruled, with a link to the ruling.
What happened
A Royalux Competitions website, seen on 11 August 2024, ran a prize draw for a £5,000 garden makeover and £2,000 in cash. The terms excluded employees of the promoter, employees of its agents or suppliers professionally connected with the competition, and their immediate families and households. A complainant said the winner was an immediate family member of the garden makeover supplier.
What the ASA found
- Under the original terms the winner should have been ineligible.
- Royalux then removed that exclusion after the draw, letting the winner keep the prize.
- The ASA called the retrospective change “not a fair or honourable way to treat participants” and found breaches of CAP Code rules 8.2 and 8.14 (promotions must be conducted equitably, under proper supervision).
Royalux was told not to run the promotion again in that form and not to change terms retrospectively to remove exclusions. Source: ASA ruling on Royalux Competitions Ltd, 15 January 2025.
The lesson
Terms are what you enter under. If a site can rewrite them after the draw, the draw isn’t fixed. Hoardsy’s rules are set before a ticket is sold, and the entry list is locked before the random number is published. See how a provably fair draw works and can staff relatives win a competition?
How Hoardsy runs its competitions
- Closing dates are never extended for slow sales.
- There’s no minimum number of sales: every end-draw prize and top instant prize is awarded, sold out or not.
- Every competition page shows its prizes and your chance per ticket before you enter.
- Every competition can be entered free by post, with the same chances as a paid ticket. See free postal entry.
Keep reading
- All Hoardsy guides
- Are online prize draws legit?
- What the ASA has ruled on UK competition sites
- How to spot a risky competition site
Last checked 12 October 2026.
Hoardsy
See the competitions
Choose a draw or an instant game. Every prize and its chance is on the page before you enter.
18+, Great Britain only. Free postal entry on every competition.
