All praise is due to Allah, peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah and upon all his family and companions.
After careful examination of the so called” Gambling Free Lottery”, we realized the following:
1- Funds received from buyers of the card and then returned to them are classified in Islamic jurisprudence as a loan; the institution at this stage is the borrower, and the buyers are the lenders. Later on, the institution is the lender and the winning buyer is the borrower. Therefore, the loan in the first case is a profit to the lenders based on what is received by the winning buyer, so this fits the jurisprudential maxim which says that every loan that leads to a benefit is a usurious(Riba).
2- The commissions from which direct and indirect expenses are deducted, such as staff salaries and advertising, lead to returning the amount of the loan to the lenders, but this amount is less than that which has been originally paid, thus it is Riba .
3-The amount paid by the winner will not be given back to him, thus it becomes a price to the loan taking into consideration the fact that this amount covers the regular price of the card, direct and indirect expenses, thus it is a sort of Riba.
Accordingly, it is prohibited to deal with "Gambling Free Lottery" because it involves Riba. And Allah knows best.