[Subscribers Paying a Monthly Sum, One Wins Each Month, and the Company Keeps the Rest]

Mufti:

Alsayyed Muhammad b. Abdallah Awad Al-Muayyady

تاريخ النشر: January 16, 2026

Fatwa number: 20271

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[Subscribers Paying a Monthly Sum, One Wins Each Month, and the Company Keeps the Rest]

Fatwa number: 20271

Question: Is it permissible, in the Law, for a company to say to its customers: “Let each customer pay one hundred riyals this month”—and their customers number in the hundreds of thousands—“in return for which the company, at the end of the month, will give one million riyals as a prize to one person among those who paid, by drawing lots,” bearing in mind that the company will earn multiples of the prize amount?

Answer: This is a type of gambling; one should not enter into it. The people of the Age of Ignorance used to do something of this sort: they would apportion a slaughtered camel by drawing lots, so some would receive and others be deprived; Allah forbade them from that.
Source: Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.2