Contest Rules: What Organisers Must Write Before a Competition Opens
Contest rules are the written terms that govern a competition: who may enter, what the deadlines and prizes are, how judges score entries, and what disqualifies one. In the United States the Federal Trade Commission requires that a contest be conducted substantially as advertised, with material terms disclosed. Well-drafted rules also cover eligibility, winner notification and a limitation of liability clause, so organiser and entrants share one record of how the contest is run.
Prepared by ContestsOnline editorial desk — Revised
Inside a set of contest rules
A set of contest rules reads like a contract and works like one. The United States Postal Service's sweepstakes kit lists what mailed prize promotions must disclose: the sponsor's name and business address, entry procedures, eligibility requirements, a termination date for eligibility, the number, retail value and description of every prize, estimated odds, and approximate dates when winners are selected and notified. The Federal Trade Commission's own competition rules open by naming the sponsor, fix registration and submission deadlines for each phase, and commit to notifying qualifying contestants by email. Together these documents give an organiser the skeleton to copy for any online contest, whether entries arrive by form, by comment, or on a hosted quiz platform.
A template gives the skeleton a head start, but the clauses still have to be filled with this contest's own facts. Every clause prevents a specific dispute: a late entry without a stated close, an ineligible winner without an eligibility line, a doubtful result without a disqualification clause. Writing them in order takes an afternoon; unpicking a contest run without them takes longer.
- Sponsor identity and a contact address, so entrants know who answers questions.
- An entry window with a stated close, because an open-ended competition cannot be judged fairly.
- Prize descriptions with odds where a draw decides, or the selection method where judges do.
- A notification method and its timing, named before the first entry arrives.
Judging criteria that hold up
Criteria are the difference between judging and reacting. Air Canada's contest rules name a panel of three staff judges and score every eligible entry on creativity and originality, on quality of submission, and on relevance to the contest theme, which lets two judges who disagree about an entry still agree about the standard. Speaking competitions follow the same discipline. Toastmasters publishes judge ballots for its International Speech Contest, and the World Championship of Public Speaking is decided on those ballots rather than on audience applause. A debate competition separates argument from delivery; an acting contest weighs character work against interpretation of the piece. Whatever the discipline, the criteria belong in the contest rules before entries open, so a judge never improvises a standard in the room.
- Creativity and originality: how fresh the idea reads against the theme.
- Quality of submission: craft, execution, and completeness of the entry.
- Relevance to the theme: whether the entry answers the brief at all.
- Adherence to the entry rules: deadlines, formats, and stated limits.
A sample scorecard for judges
A sample scorecard carries four columns: the criterion, what it measures, the scoring scale, and space for a note. For a garden competition the rows read planting design, health of the plants, and overall presentation; for a pie eating contest a single line covers speed and a clean plate; for a hat-decorating contest at a school fair, the card the judges hold names creativity, craft, and theme. Examples shrink with the contest and never disappear, because a score without a written standard is only an opinion with a number on it.
The law behind the rules
United States law makes some contest terms mandatory. A contest or sweepstakes in the United States runs on a no-purchase basis: the Federal Trade Commission says paying cannot be required, either to enter or to improve the odds of winning, and a promotion that asks for payment to enter stops being a contest at all. The free-entry clause in most published rules pages is that principle written down.
Broadcasters carry a duty of their own: a station that broadcasts or advertises a contest it conducts must fully and accurately disclose the material terms, and must conduct the contest substantially as announced, over the air or online. The legal meaning of contest rules, then, is disclosure plus performance; the rules exist so the public knows the terms before entering, and the organiser is held to what it published. In the UK the advertising codes take the same line for a prize competition, requiring significant conditions to be clear up front.
Canada and Quebec
Canadian contests answer to more than one rulebook, and Quebec is the sharpest of them. The province's regulations treat publicity contests on their own terms: the rules step aside below a stated total prize value, though narrow exceptions still reach smaller contests, and advertising for a larger publicity contest must be filed with the board ten days before publication, a delivery duty organisers build into the launch calendar. An organiser opening a contest to residents of Canada drafts with those filings in mind, so the calendar becomes part of the launch rather than an afterthought.
Platform terms and disqualified entries
A contest on a social platform obeys two layers of rules at once. Meta's promotion terms make the organiser responsible for the official rules and for eligibility, including age and residency restrictions, and require an acknowledgement that the platform does not sponsor or administer the promotion. TikTok's advertising policy calls for clear entry requirements, draw timing, prize availability, restrictions, and selection criteria. LeetCode, which runs coding competitions, lists one user submitting through multiple accounts during a contest as a violation, and treats accounts on its two sites as separate even when both belong to the same person.
Disqualification is whatever the organiser's rules define it to be, and nothing more. A rules document that never says what voids an entry leaves the organiser arguing taste; one that lists the violations gives the organiser a citation. Platform terms handle what the host enforces, contest rules handle what the organiser enforces, and the two are drafted to fit together rather than to repeat each other.
Entries that read as fake
Rules are the organiser's instrument against entries that arrive manufactured. A published clause that voids entries delivered in bulk, or votes cast by accounts created in a rush before the window opened, gives the organiser something concrete to apply when a batch of votes lands from one place; the platform's dashboard and its logs are where the pattern is reviewed. Some contest rules go further and void votes that a paid service supplied, stating the disqualification in advance so the remedy is already in writing. What rules cannot do is detect anything on their own; detection lives in the platform's tools and in the organiser's review of its counters.
Where the rules live
Published contests post their rules where the entry form lives: a link beside the entry button, a pinned post on the organiser's site, or a downloadable list of terms. Online competitions often publish the rules before entries open, and upcoming promotions carry the dates in the announcement, often posted online as well. Reading the rules before entering takes minutes. When a site offering a competition shows no rules at all, that absence is information too, and the cautious answer is not to enter.
Free plans and paid tiers
Whether a contest runs on the free plan of a hosted tool or on a premium tier with fraud settings switched on, the rules page owes entrants the same content. Cost changes capacity, entry limits and branding; it does not change what the law expects an organiser to disclose. A competition assembled for nothing still names a sponsor, dates, eligibility and judging criteria, and a premium package does not write those clauses for you. The one place a plan touches the rules directly is enforcement: paid tiers add the fraud settings and moderation queues that make the disqualification clause practical, while the free plan leaves the organiser reading entries by hand.
| Clause | What it states | The dispute it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsor | Who runs the contest and where to send questions | Entrants argue with a platform instead of an organiser |
| Entry window | Opening and closing dates for entries | Late entries arrive with no reference point to apply |
| Eligibility | Age, residency and other restrictions on entrants | An ineligible winner surfaces after the prize is promised |
| Prizes | Number, description and value of what can be won | Expectations form from advertising instead of the document |
| Judging criteria | The standards judges apply and the panel's makeup | Scores read as improvised and appeals have no basis |
| Disqualification | What voids an entry and who decides | A doubtful result has no written remedy |
| Notification | How and when winners are contacted | Winners learn the outcome by chance |
| Limitation of liability | A clause capping the organiser's exposure if something goes wrong | A dispute heads somewhere neither side planned |
Procedure
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Name the sponsor and the window
Open the contest rules with who is running the competition and an address for questions, then state when entries open and close, with dates and a time zone. The United States Postal Service requires exactly this disclosure for mailed promotions, and online contests borrow the habit.
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Define eligibility and entry limits
State age and residency restrictions, who is barred from entering, and how many entries one person files. Meta's promotion terms make eligibility the organiser's responsibility rather than the platform's, so the clause cannot be delegated.
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Describe prizes, odds and selection
List every prize with its number and description, and name the selection method: judged scoring, random draw or public vote. Add the approximate dates when winners are selected and notified, as the Postal Service kit and the FTC's own rules both do.
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Fix the judging criteria before launch
Name the criteria and the panel. Air Canada's rules score creativity, quality and theme relevance with three staff judges; Toastmasters publishes ballots before its speech contests begin. Judges who know the standard in advance never improvise one.
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Write the disqualification clause
Define what voids an entry: duplicate accounts, entries delivered in bulk by a paid service, or submissions outside the stated format, and say who decides. LeetCode's violation list shows how specific a published definition can be.
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Publish, date and keep the record
Post the rules beside the entry form before the first entry arrives, keep the published version unchanged while the contest runs, and answer every question from the document rather than from memory. A broadcaster runs its contest substantially as announced; an online organiser holds to the same discipline.
Readers ask
How do you judge a contest?
Judging starts from written criteria, not from impressions. A judge scores every entry against the same published standards, in the same order, before seeing anyone else's marks. Air Canada's contest rules, for example, have three staff judges score eligible entries on creativity and originality, quality of submission, and relevance to the theme. Toastmasters applies the same principle to speech contests through published judge ballots. If the rules name no criteria, the contest is being judged by taste, and the results will say so.
How do you judge a contest from a sample sheet?
A sample sheet has four parts: the criterion, what it measures, the scoring scale, and space for a note. Judges fill one per entry, in the same order each time, and keep the sheets until the contest closes. For a garden competition the rows read planting design, plant health and presentation; for a pie eating contest a single line covers speed and a clean plate.
How do you judge an oratorical contest?
An oratorical contest is judged on the speech itself, split between what is said and how it is delivered. Toastmasters' International Speech Contest uses published judge ballots that consider speech development, effectiveness and language alongside voice and physical presence, and the World Championship of Public Speaking is decided on those ballots. The rules also require the speech to be the contestant's own work.
What is an example of judging criteria for an acting contest?
An example for an acting contest reads: character believability, vocal work, physical commitment, and interpretation of the piece, each scored on a scale fixed in the rules. A debate competition splits differently, weighing argument and rebuttal above stage presence, which is why the two formats never share a sheet. The panel's marks are averaged, and the criteria are published with the rules.
How do you judge in a contest decided by public votes?
Judging in a contest decided by public votes means judging the rules rather than the entries. The rules fix who may vote, how often, and what voids a batch of votes; the organiser then applies those clauses to the counter and its logs before announcing a result. Where judges shortlist first, the skill criteria still decide who reaches the public stage.
Are contest rules required by law?
Yes. In the United States the Federal Trade Commission treats a sweepstakes that requires payment to enter as illegal, and a broadcaster that advertises a contest it conducts must disclose the material terms and run the promotion substantially as announced. In Canada, Quebec imposes filing duties on publicity contests above a stated prize value. The rules page is where those duties take written form.
Do Canadian contest rules change in Quebec?
Canadian contests follow one disclosure habit, but Quebec adds a regime of its own. The province's publicity contest rules step aside below a stated total prize value, with narrow exceptions that still reach smaller contests, and advertising for a larger one is filed with the board ten days before publication. A nationwide contest is drafted with Quebec residents included from the start.
Notes and sources
- ftc.gov. ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/advertising-faqs-guide-small-business.
- TikTok. ads.tiktok.com/resources/help/article/tiktok-after-conversion-experience-policy.
- aircanada.com. aircanada.com/fr/en/aco/home/book/special-offers/canada150/contest.html.
- legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca. legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cr/L-6,%20r.%206.
- support.leetcode.com. support.leetcode.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011984933-What-are-considered-contest-violations.
ContestsOnline publishes this material as a reference on contest rules, not as legal advice; a contest carrying real prize money deserves a qualified professional in the organiser's own jurisdiction. The reference never names a vote seller, never quotes a price, and never explains how to get past the checks an organiser or a platform runs. It cannot settle a dispute between an entrant and an organiser, and it does not replace the terms of the platform hosting the competition.
Woobox's user terms require entrants to agree to the organiser's official rules, so any limit on bought or incentivised votes depends on the particular contest. Walmart's Associate Talent Search rules prohibit paying for votes and let Walmart void fraudulent votes or disqualify the entrant. The platform's terms and the organiser's rules are two documents, and a disqualification is decided under the second.
Woobox lists three warning signs of bought votes: many votes from one IP address, votes from people in different countries and regular voting intervals. Award Force says its platform detects and blocks automated or scripted voting and rate-limits rapid voting. Ordinary participation is uneven in time and independent in origin, so it shows none of those patterns; this describes how checks read a count and is not a method for passing one.
In the United States, the FTC says a sweepstakes cannot require a purchase to enter, and California says a sweepstakes must offer a way to enter without cost. Those rules concern sweepstakes entry, not votes: whether a contest allows paid votes is written in its own rules, and ViralSweep even lets organisers configure Pay to Vote. Contests whose rules bar outside votes are refused, and so are political ballots.
Once voting closes, a refund applies where votes ordered for a contest never appear in the count the contest itself displays. ViralSweep says its protections may silently flag and block a vote, and Woobox says votes from IP addresses it has flagged as fraudulent do not count even when the voter appears to have succeeded, so the displayed count is the test. An organiser's ruling or a disqualification is never refunded, and neither is an account ban such as the permanent one Gleam says a breach of its terms may bring.