Licenses
What is RMG?
Real Money Gambling (RMG) is any form of gambling that gives cash or prizes that can be redeemed for cash. That includes competition and raffle businesses.
The RMG Licence is a permit from Meta (Facebook & Instagram) to advertise your competition business on their platforms. With both sites being an important source of audience and revenue for many competition businesses, it’s vitally important that you have your RMG licence in place, to stop account suspensions and bans.
For many competition businesses, Facebook and Facebook Ads is an important part of creating awareness for competitions and generating revenue. So finding out that your ads have been banned and your account suspended can be stressful. Not to mention the hassle of reaching a real person on the Facebook customer service team!
But it doesn’t need to be that way.
As an organisation, Facebook has always been cautious promoting any activities associated with online gambling. This includes competitions, raffles and draws. Most recently, they’ve been cracking down on ad accounts which are not RMG approved. You can read more about Facebook Advertising policies here.
With the right strategy and process in place, this isn’t as complicated as it all sounds. To get your competition ads pre-approved for Facebook, here’s what you need to do…
Get approval from Facebook to advertise your competitions
If you are using Facebook (as well as Instagram) to promote your competitions, it is likely you’ll be asked to apply for advance approval of your ad account. This involves completing the Online Real Money Gaming (RMG) Application form and the Facebook RMG questionnaire.
During the process, you’ll be asked to select the region you wish to advertise in and the domain name you intend to use. The RMG Questionnaire will also ask you how you will stop unauthorised players from accessing your competition website (i.e. underaged entries or those from an unauthorised territory) and explain how the activity is legal.
A specialist solicitor is also needed for approval
As well as prior written approval from Facebook, you’ll need a letter from a solicitor about the legality of your product in the UK. We recommend working with a legal professional or firm who is experienced in dealing with competition clients and reversing ad account suspensions. In fact, we’ve partnered up with one ourselves as part of our commitment to delivering the very best service to our competition clients!
Why is an RMG Licence important for Facebook Advertising?
As more competition businesses who advertise on Facebook and Instagram without an RMG license are getting ad account bans, we are issuing this advice:
Your website must be live and you must have RMG approval to advertise competitions on Facebook and Instagram. Without an RMG licence, your ad account may be suspended. This means you won’t be able to advertise again until your account is reinstated, which can be a slow process or even a permanent ban.
You should also prepare for your ads account having a spend cap. Facebook limits the amount new accounts can spend to minimise the potential of fraud and exploitation. In order to increase this cap, we recommend that clients with new competition businesses start off by running free competitions and (if RMG approved) paid competitions with smaller prizes. You don’t need to spend the full amount. Over time, Facebook will monitor your business for policy violations and raise your spending limit if they see that your business is trustworthy.
Let Zap Help
Staying compliant with all the rules and regulations can take up lots of time and energy, especially when it comes to legal requirements and legalese. So why not let us handle it?
Zap Competitions can apply for RMG approval on your behalf. We offer this service to many of our clients and so we’re old hands at the loops and red tape, leaving you more time to focus on growing your business. We’ll also introduce you to a specialist who can make sure your sites legal pages (like your T&C’s) are up to date, which further reduces the risk that Meta will pull any of your Facebook or Instagram ad content.
