If you’re running a giveaway to grow your audience, launch a new product, or boost sales, you’re not alone. Trade promotions (often called “promotional lotteries”) are one of the most popular marketing tools for Australian small businesses.
But even a simple “Win a $1,000 voucher!” campaign can create legal risk if your entry method, advertising, or terms aren’t set up properly.
This guide is designed to help you understand trade promotions in Victoria compliance from a practical, business-owner perspective, so you can run your promotion with confidence.
Quick note: the rules can differ between states and territories. If your promotion is open to entrants outside Victoria, you may need to comply with other jurisdictions too (even if your business is based in Melbourne). In particular, some jurisdictions may still have notification or permit-style requirements depending on the promotion’s structure and prize pool.
In simple terms, a trade promotion lottery in Victoria is a promotional competition run to advertise or increase demand for your goods or services, where:
- you’re promoting a business (not fundraising for a charity), and
- winners are determined by chance (for example, a random draw), not skill.
Common examples include:
- “Spend $50 and go in the draw to win”
- “Sign up to our newsletter for your chance to win”
- “Follow, like, and tag a friend to enter” (where the winner is randomly selected)
Chance Vs Skill: Why It Matters
A lot of legal confusion comes down to whether your promotion is a game of chance or a game of skill.
- Chance: winners are chosen randomly (trade promotion lotteries typically fall here).
- Skill: winners are chosen based on merit (for example, “best photo” or “best written answer” judged against published criteria).
Why does this matter? Because different legal frameworks can apply, and the compliance steps you take (including how you draft your terms and how you run the judging/draw) should match the type of promotion you’re actually running.
In Victoria, businesses can often run trade promotion lotteries without needing a permit. In practice, Victoria is generally considered a “no permit” state for trade promotions, and oversight sits with the Victorian gambling regulator (the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission (VGCCC)).
However, “no permit required” doesn’t mean “no rules.” You still need to get the fundamentals right, including your terms and conditions, your draw process, and how you promote the competition. Your promotion also still needs to fit within what Victoria treats as a genuine trade promotion (rather than an unlawful lottery or a different regulated activity), including being run to promote your goods or services and being conducted fairly and as advertised.
Also, if your trade promotion is open to entrants in other states/territories, permit requirements and rules can change quickly depending on where your entrants live - so a “Victoria-friendly” set-up may still need changes for interstate entrants.
Most trade promotion issues happen because businesses design the marketing first and only think about the legal side later.
A better approach is to decide your commercial goal, then build a compliant competition structure around it.
Start With These Practical Questions
- What’s the objective? (email signups, sales, app downloads, in-store visits, brand awareness)
- Is it a random draw or a judged competition? (chance vs skill)
- Who can enter? (age limits, geographic limits, employees and family exclusions)
- How will entries be verified? (proof of purchase, unique codes, email verification)
- What is the prize and how is it delivered? (cash, gift card, product bundle, travel, experience)
- How will you handle disputes? (invalid entries, late entries, multiple entries)
Many trade promotions are tied to purchases (for example, “buy a product to enter”). These can work well commercially, but they can also create extra compliance pressure around advertising, refunds, and customer expectations.
A key practical point is to avoid structuring entry in a way that looks like entrants are paying just for the chance to win (rather than buying your genuine goods/services on standard terms). If you’re using a “minimum spend” mechanic, keep the offer clear and make sure the spend requirement and eligibility rules are transparent.
It’s also worth checking your broader consumer-facing wording is consistent with advertised price laws, especially if your promotion includes “minimum spend” thresholds, bundle pricing, or conditions that affect the final price paid.
When you run trade promotions in Victoria, you’re essentially balancing three core legal areas:
- gambling-style rules that apply to promotional lotteries (because the winner is decided by chance)
- Australian Consumer Law (ACL) obligations about misleading promotions, unfair terms, and transparency
- privacy and marketing laws if you collect personal information or send marketing messages
Even if you’ve run giveaways before, it’s important to treat each new campaign as its own compliance project (because the entry method, prize type, and promotional channels change the risk profile).
In general, your promotion should be run for genuine promotional purposes connected to your business. It shouldn’t look like you’re running an unregulated gambling product or charging people for an entry “ticket”.
If you’re unsure where your promotion sits, it can help to sanity-check your concept against general Victorian promotion requirements and best practices, alongside broader guidance like raffle regulations in Victoria (noting that raffles and trade promotions are not the same thing, but they often raise similar compliance questions).
Avoid Misleading Or Unclear “Win” Messaging
The ACL applies to trade promotions, which means you need to avoid misleading or deceptive conduct in how you advertise the giveaway.
Practically, this means:
- don’t exaggerate the value of the prize (or hide conditions that reduce the real value)
- don’t imply “everyone wins” if only a small number will win
- don’t bury key conditions in fine print if they would change how someone decides to enter
If you’re running a campaign that feels like a “freebie” or “free giveaway,” it can also help to sense-check your structure against general giveaway laws, because the same transparency principles come up again and again.
Be Careful With Entry Conditions (Especially On Social Media)
Some of the most common compliance issues we see happen when businesses add entry mechanics like:
- tagging friends
- sharing to stories
- posting user-generated content
- commenting personal information publicly
These methods can be fine, but you need to think through:
- how you’ll verify entries
- how you’ll store and use entrants’ details
- whether your terms match what you’re asking people to do
Also, if your promotion involves collecting content (like photos or videos), you should consider what rights you need to use that content later (for example, reposting entries for marketing). That should be dealt with clearly in your terms.
Your terms and conditions aren’t just “admin.” They’re what protect you if something goes wrong.
They also help you run the promotion consistently, especially if you have staff involved or you’re managing a high volume of entrants.
In many cases, it’s worth putting proper Competition Terms & Conditions in place rather than relying on a short caption or a few dot points.
Core T&Cs Checklist
While every promotion is different, your trade promotions terms and conditions in Victoria commonly cover:
- Promoter details: who is running the promotion (your legal entity name and ABN/ACN if relevant)
- Eligibility: age limits, location restrictions, exclusions (for example, employees and immediate family)
- Promotion period: start and end date/time (including time zone)
- How to enter: steps required, entry limits, what makes an entry valid
- Prize details: what the prize is, value, any inclusions/exclusions, expiry dates, and whether it’s transferable
- Draw details: date/time/location of draw, method of draw, and what happens if the draw can’t proceed as planned
- Winner notification: how and when winners are contacted (and what happens if they can’t be reached)
- Redraw rules: when you can redraw and how you’ll do it
- Verification: what proof you can request (for example, proof of purchase) and consequences for invalid entries
- Liability and risk wording: appropriate limitations (especially for experiences, travel, or physical prizes)
- Privacy: what personal data is collected and how it is used
Prize Substitution And Force Majeure (Yes, It Still Matters)
Supply issues happen. Venues cancel. Products go out of stock.
Your terms should clearly address whether you can substitute a prize, in what circumstances, and what a substitute prize might look like. If you don’t deal with this upfront, you risk disputes with winners (and reputational damage that can outweigh the marketing benefits of running the promotion in the first place).
One More Practical Tip: Make Your T&Cs Easy To Access
From a customer trust perspective, it’s a good idea to make your terms available via a clear link wherever the promotion is advertised (for example, link-in-bio, landing page, or website footer). This also reduces the risk of someone arguing they never saw the conditions.
Privacy, Marketing And Data: What You Can (And Can’t) Do With Entrants’ Details
Trade promotions are often run to build a marketing list. That’s completely legitimate, but you need to do it transparently.
If you’re collecting personal information (like names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, or social handles), you should think about privacy compliance from day one.
For most businesses running promotions online, it’s sensible to have a properly drafted Privacy Policy that explains what you collect, why you collect it, how you store it, and who you share it with (if anyone).
Email And SMS Marketing After The Giveaway
If you plan to email entrants after the promotion (for example, sending newsletters, promotional offers, or launch announcements), your process needs to align with Australian spam rules.
In practice, that usually means:
- only sending marketing messages where you have consent (or another lawful basis)
- including a functional unsubscribe option
- being honest about who is sending the message
If email marketing is part of your growth plan, it’s worth building your entry form and opt-in wording with email marketing laws in mind, rather than trying to retrofit compliance later.
Many trade promotions use third-party tools for:
- landing pages and forms
- email marketing
- random draw generators
- CRM systems
That’s fine, but you should be clear about where your customer data is going, how it’s stored, and whether it’s sent overseas. From a risk perspective, you should also make sure your team knows who has access to the data and how long it will be kept.
Running The Draw, Announcing Winners, And Keeping Records
Once your promotion goes live, your compliance focus shifts from planning to execution.
The safest approach for trade promotions in Victoria is to run the draw exactly as your terms describe, then keep clear records to show it was conducted fairly. This is especially important because if someone complains (for example, to a platform, to Consumer Affairs, or to the gambling regulator), you’ll want to be able to show what happened and when.
How To Run A Clean, Defensible Draw Process
Even if your audience is small, treat your draw process like it could be audited (because if there’s a complaint, you may need to demonstrate what happened).
Practical steps that help include:
- Locking entries at the deadline: export entries at the end time stated in your terms
- Keeping a list of valid entries: remove duplicates or invalid entries based on your entry rules
- Recording the draw: keep a file note of the date/time and method; some businesses also screen-record the random selection
- Notifying winners promptly: follow the contact method and timeframe in your terms
- Managing redraws carefully: only redraw if your terms allow it and record why
Publishing Winners: Be Thoughtful About Privacy
Many promotions publish winners (for example, first initial and suburb) to show transparency.
If you plan to publish winner information, make sure this is disclosed in your terms and handled in a privacy-conscious way. Publishing more personal information than necessary can create avoidable privacy risk.
“We Can’t Deliver The Prize” Scenarios
Sometimes a prize becomes unavailable or a winner can’t be contacted.
This is where good terms and conditions really earn their keep. If your terms clearly explain:
- how long you’ll try contacting the winner
- what counts as a valid claim
- when you can redraw
- whether you can substitute the prize
…then you’re far more likely to resolve issues quickly without a public dispute.
Key Takeaways
- Trade promotions in Victoria are usually promotional lotteries where winners are decided by chance, and they must be run carefully even when no permit is required.
- Before launching, confirm whether your promotion is a game of chance or a game of skill, because the compliance steps (and risk profile) are different.
- Clear, accessible terms and conditions are one of the best ways to protect your business and reduce disputes about eligibility, entry methods, prize delivery, and redraws.
- Australian Consumer Law still applies, so your advertising needs to be transparent and not misleading (including how you describe prizes and entry requirements).
- If you collect personal information or add entrants to a marketing list, privacy and spam compliance should be built into your entry process from the start.
- Running the draw properly and keeping records helps you respond quickly if there’s a complaint and shows your promotion was conducted fairly.
If you’d like help setting up terms and conditions for trade promotions in Victoria, reviewing your promotional campaign, or making sure your competition is compliant before you launch, reach us at 1800 730 617 or team@sprintlaw.com.au for a free, no-obligations chat.
