Gifting Shadowlands Epic Edition to a friend

Going to gift my friend epic SL edition , was just wondering does his 30 game time starts moment he claims the gift or how does it work with epic version , since he is not planning to start playing till prepatch , so I am trying to save him some bucks.
Couldn’t find any answer to this so I am asking here.

When buying for self the gametime is activated right away. I assume it works same way when gifting, though I don’t know if it is when the recipnient claims the gift or when you buy the gift.

If any blues are going to answer , for how long gift can stay unclaimed , in that case would it be possible for me to gift it now and for him to claim it when prepatch hits so he saves gametime from it

Gifting now, and the recipient claiming, for example - January 2021, shouldn’t present any issues and the game time will start when claimed.

When the expansion after Shadowlands starts, that could potentially cause some issues, so out of an abundance of caution we would encourage claiming before then.