Effective July 1, 2005, Florida will relax its requirement that sweepstakes rules be printed in their entirety on every advertisement showcasing the promotion.

Prior to the enactment of this modification, under Florida Statute 849.094, advertisers were required to print the full entry rules in each an every advertisement that promoted a sweepstakes, even when the ad was quite small, such as in a magazine. Under the modification, Florida will now allow advertisers to print just the “material” elements of the contest, so long as there is a mailing address, website, or toll-free number listed for consumers to get a complete copy of the sweepstakes rules.

Both the old and newly modified statute were applicable to sweepstakes (games of chance) where the aggregate prize value was $5000.00 or more, so promotions that award smaller prizes will not be affected by this. Defining what is a material will be subject to administrative hearings, but in all likelihood, material disclosures will include the dates of the sweepstakes, to which residents the promotion is open, the prizes (and odds, if known), and the age of entrants.

This entry was posted by Tsan Abrahamson on Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Sweepstakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.