Running a Big Online Raffle From Outside Queensland? Adding QLD Is (Almost) Free
When an organisation plans a large online raffle, every state it wants to reach comes with a question: what does it cost us in compliance to sell there? Sometimes the answer is a permit application, sometimes a registration, sometimes weeks of lead time. So states get weighed one by one — is the extra audience worth the extra paperwork?
Queensland looks, on paper, like one of the expensive ones. It has its own Act, its own licence categories, and a Category 3 licence requirement for raffles over $50,000 — exactly the territory a serious national raffle plays in. Plenty of interstate organisers have either paid for a Queensland licence they may never have needed, or quietly left Queensland out of their raffle to be safe.
Here is the thing most of them never hear: if your organisation is based outside Queensland and Queenslanders can only buy your tickets online, Queensland’s gaming law most likely does not apply to your raffle at all. No licence, no Category 3 threshold, no application. One of the biggest ticket-buying populations in the country, added to your raffle for the cost of ticking a box.
Where that comes from
Queensland’s Charitable and Non-Profit Gaming Act 1999 carves this out itself, in section 4: the Act does not apply to a game lawfully conducted under another jurisdiction’s law, so long as the conduct of the game in Queensland “consists only of advertising the game.”
For years the sticking point was one word. A raffle page a Queenslander can read is plainly advertising. But a raffle page a Queenslander can buy from? Is that still advertising in Queensland, or is the game now being conducted there? The Act doesn’t say, and organisers couldn’t get a plain answer — so they defaulted to caution, and caution meant either paying for a licence or excluding Queensland.
We asked the regulator
In July 2026 we put the question directly to Queensland’s Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation, in the context of a real interstate raffle, and received the answer in writing.
OLGR’s position: what takes an interstate raffle beyond “advertising” — and therefore into the Act — is activity physically located in Queensland, such as physical ticket sales conducted in Queensland, or servers located in Queensland. A Queenslander finding an interstate raffle online and buying a ticket does not, on its own, bring that raffle under Queensland’s regime. The conduct of the game stays where the organisation and its operation are.
That resolves the grey zone in the interstate organiser’s favour — and it means the compliance cost of adding Queensland to an online raffle is, in most cases, nothing.
The conditions
The exemption stands on all of the following:
- Your raffle is lawfully conducted under your home state or territory’s law — whatever that requires for a raffle of your size, whether a permit, a registration or nothing at all. The exemption piggybacks on your home authorisation; it doesn’t replace it.
- No physical selling in Queensland. No paper tickets at a Queensland event, no seller at a Queensland market, no booth over the border. The moment tickets are sold in-person in Queensland, the exemption is gone and the ordinary Queensland rules apply to the raffle.
- Your raffle’s infrastructure isn’t in Queensland. For raffles run on RaffleLink this is handled — our platform is hosted in Sydney and Melbourne.
And the eligibility condition that frames the whole thing: this is an exemption for interstate organisations. If your organisation is based in Queensland, none of this applies to you — you’re simply under the normal Queensland rules, which have their own generous permit-free thresholds for smaller raffles.
What it changes in practice
For a large online raffle run from anywhere but Queensland, the state-by-state maths gets simpler: sort out your home state properly, and Queensland comes along without a separate application, fee or waiting period. The reach-versus-paperwork trade-off that rules states in or out of a raffle simply doesn’t arise for Queensland — provided your raffle stays online.
On RaffleLink, this is built in. When you set up a raffle that includes Queensland, we check the structural facts — where your organisation is based, which states you’re selling into — and where the exemption is available, we offer it as an election. You attest that you won’t sell tickets in-person in Queensland, and Queensland opens up with no licence prompt. If your circumstances later change in a way that breaks the exemption, the compliance checks pick it up rather than leaving you exposed.
The caveats that matter
This is Queensland’s rule, not a national principle. Section 4’s wording is specific to Queensland’s Act. Other states’ laws hook into online sales differently — some look at where the promoter is, some at where tickets are sold — so do not assume the mirror image holds anywhere else. Each state needs its own answer.
And the usual disclaimer, sincerely meant: this article is general information based on our correspondence with OLGR about the circumstances described, not legal advice. If your raffle has unusual features — physical sales channels, a Queensland connection beyond online buyers, serious scale — put your specific facts to OLGR or your home regulator before relying on any exemption.
RaffleLink builds state-by-state compliance checks into every raffle, so questions like this one are answered before your raffle goes live. Learn more.
