Sweepstakes brands are not carried
The requirementstatement
A brand whose business is sweepstakes must not be registered for A2P messaging.
- Severityseverity
- BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
- When it bitesphase
- Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
- What is checkedobject
- brand.vertical + brand fields + website content
- Where it liveslayer
- BrandBRAND
- How Ekas settles itdetectability
- AI · crawlCRAWL
- Needs your live site or policy page fetched and read. Ekas crawls it the way a reviewer would.
- What the fix involvesfailureClass
- Hard stopHARD_STOP
- Not remediable. Resubmitting will not help, and anyone offering to fix it is selling you a rejection.
- Who requires itauthorities
- AWSBandwidth
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies to every 10DLC registration.
Why this rule existsrationale
Sweepstakes messaging carries both a high complaint rate and real regulatory complexity — the rules differ by state and the prize claim is a natural phishing vector — so the category is excluded at the brand. TCR publishing a SWEEPSTAKE use case makes this genuinely confusing: the use case exists and is gated separately, and selecting it does not make the brand eligible.
How to fix itremediation
A sweepstakes business cannot be registered. Where an ordinary business runs an occasional promotion, keep the brand and the campaign about the business rather than about the draw, and expect the draw itself to need the separately gated use case.
Notesnotes
Decided from the website, which is why this is CRAWL rather than a form judgement — a sweepstakes operator rarely describes itself that way in the brand fields. Note that `use_case=SWEEPSTAKE` exists at TCR and is gated on its own terms; holding it does not make an ineligible brand eligible.
Rules you will hit next
6 other rules read brand.vertical + brand fields + website content. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.
BRD-275Brands that buy, sell or share consumer data are not carriedBlockingBLOCKINGBRD-276Gambling, betting and lottery brands are not carriedBlockingBLOCKINGBRD-277High-risk financial services brands are not carriedBlockingBLOCKINGBRD-278Cannabis, CBD and related brands are not carried, whatever the trafficBlockingBLOCKINGBRD-279Third-party job boards are not carriedBlockingBLOCKINGBRD-282Debt collection, debt relief and credit repair brands are not carriedBlockingBLOCKING
BRD-281 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.