Is this because the government will not let them make a purchase necessary to play?
I’m of course talking about all these sweepstakes and games food companies always have going on.
Taco Bell, McDonalds, breakfast cereal, almost every food product on the shelves.
I thought it was ‘no proof of purchase necessary’. Probably because they’d get a lot of bad press if someone came with both boardwalk AND park place, and they didnt have the receipts to prove it.
I’ve wondered about this myself.
from:
http://www.wildman.com/article/No_Purchase_Necessary.pdf
"The first thing you need to understand is the difference between a lottery, a sweepstakes and a contest. A lottery has three key determinative elements: prize, chance, and consideration. Lotteries in this country are exclusively government run, where permitted, and prohibited outright in many states. In short, you cannot create a lottery as part of a legal promotion and, accordingly, must remove one of the three elements of a lottery from your promotion. In addition, you must navigate around laws against gambling, which is generally defined as payment of consideration for a chance to win something of greater value.
A sweepstakes is a game or other promotion that awards a prize to a winner (or winners) selected based on chance. To keep a sweepstakes from becoming an illegal lottery, there must be no consideration. Consideration can come in many forms: purchase of a product, short message service (SMS) text, 900 number phone charges, subscription fees, or engaging in activities that require substantial time or effort. Attorneys need to look closely for entry requirements that rise to the level of legal consideration. And if such requirements exist, they should structure the sweepstakes with a universally available free alternative method of entry (AME) that provides equality to entrants who use the AME (to assure that the promotion is a sweepstakes and not a lottery)."
The companies must feel like they need to give some leeway, or else nobody will really care to play. It usually doesn’t even matter to the companies running the contests if someone actually wins the money. A lot of times these companies take out insurance policies with Berkshire Hathaway or other big investment firms so that they don’t even have to pay the excessive prizes if odds somehow turn against them.
I can’t say for certain, but I think it is a government regulation. If purchase was necessary, it would be very similar to gambling. They have ways around it though. Mailing in a game piece request form. Too much hasstle, but it give the post office some revenue.