Section 259: Facilitating a lottery
634.This section makes it an offence to facilitate a lottery, which means in this context, advertising a particular lottery, or printing tickets or promotional material for it. Since it is provided that these actions must be with respect to a “particular lottery”, this offence is not intended to capture those who, for example, print generic tickets that can be used in lotteries generally.
635.The offence will not apply if the lottery is exempt, or if a person acts in accordance with the terms and conditions of an operating licence. A person does not need to be a licence holder themselves to benefit from this exemption; they will be covered if they act for the licence holder (for example, if they are an employee, or someone who provides services, such as a printing company).
636.It will be a defence for the person to show that he reasonably believed that:
the lottery was an exempt lottery under Schedule 11, or a lottery operating licence was held and complied with;
the arrangement was part of the National Lottery; or
the arrangement did not fall within the definition of “lottery” under Part 1.
637.As with the offence of promoting a lottery, there is a further defence to the offence in this section set out in section 265, where a person reasonably believed that the lottery was not one to which this Part applied because it was outside the territorial application of this Part.