No sweepstakes, raffle or contest-entry content

The requirementstatement

Campaign content must not promote sweepstakes, raffles, prize giveaways or contest entry.

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: campaign.description + campaign.sample[] + campaign.message_flow
Where it liveslayer: Message contentMESSAGE_CONTENT
How Ekas settles itdetectability: AI · formAI_FORM; A semantic question about what you wrote: whether a description matches a use case, whether a name looks like a filed entity. Judged by a model against written criteria.
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: TwilioAWSBandwidthTelnyxSinch
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

Twilio files sweepstakes under gambling and refuses the category outright for "high abuse potential and regulatory complexity", while TCR and Sinch publish a Sweepstakes use case you can register under — so the same giveaway is a legitimate programme on one route and a dead campaign on another. That split is what makes this expensive: a marketing team runs the giveaway that worked last year, registers it as MARKETING, and loses the campaign rather than being told to change one dropdown. Prize mechanics also carry real consumer harm on SMS, because a giveaway is the cheapest way ever invented to buy a phone number from someone who was not thinking about what they were joining.

How to fix itremediation

Check whether your route publishes a Sweepstakes use case before you do anything else, because that decides whether this is a dropdown change or the end of the campaign. Where it exists, register under it and link the official rules from the message. Where it does not, replace the chance-based mechanic with a certain one — every subscriber gets the discount — and remove the draw from the samples, the description and the opt-in copy.

Common mistakespitfalls

Moving the draw out of the samples but leaving "enter to win" in the opt-in call to action does not settle it: the incentivised-opt-in limb is judged on the message flow, and that is where the offer usually lives.

Provider rejection codescodes

The code you get back when this rule is what failed, and whether that provider lets you resubmit.

Provider	Code	Resubmit
Twiliogen2	30945	No
Twilio	30462	No

Notesnotes

Genuine authority divergence rather than a strictness difference: Twilio 30945 and toll-free 30462 refuse the category, while TCR and Sinch (CR1105, CR2009, CR3009) provide a Sweepstakes use case to register it under. Kept BLOCKING on the strict reading, with the use-case route named in the remediation so a user on a permissive route is not told to abandon a legitimate programme.

Rules you will hit next

6 other rules read campaign.description + campaign.sample[] + campaign.message_flow. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

MSG-137No unsolicited bulk messagingBlockingBLOCKING MSG-161SHAFT screening covers every campaign field, not a sample of themBlockingBLOCKING MSG-164No underage, non-consensual or illegal sexual themesBlockingBLOCKING MSG-170No content promoting, glorifying or inciting violenceBlockingBLOCKING MSG-182No explosives, fireworks or pyrotechnics contentBlockingBLOCKING MSG-183No weapons that are not legal in all fifty statesBlockingBLOCKING

All message content rules

MSG-206 is one of 122 message content rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.