Thanks to the recent amendments to the Sweepstakes and Games of Chance Regulation in Puerto Rico, effective November 27, 2009 promoters and advertisers will be able to conduct promotions in Puerto Rico without the previously restraining legal barriers. Until now marketers were forced to void promotions and exclude residents of Puerto Rico in participating in stateside promotions. This benefits both the 3.9 million residents of Puerto Rico and promotion marketers.
Changes in Puerto Rico’s Sweepstakes and Games of Chance Regulation align the Commonwealth’s rules and definitions with regulations in the United States promulgated by the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and individual States.
Highlights of the new regulation include:
• Rules certification by a notary is no longer needed.
• Notarized certification of drawing procedures is no longer required.
• Notarized certification of game piece security codes is no longer needed.
• Odds statements have been simplified to conform to typical odds statements.
• Tax liability, which was placed on the promoter, is now on the entrant.
• Requirement that full rules appear in print ad that covers more than two-thirds of the page is no longer needed.
• The requirement that the rules be published, announced and disseminated into Spanish is no longer needed. Now, you just need to publish the rules in the same language that the advertising appears in.
• An express provision defining “abbreviated rules” has been added, the regulation provides for the use of abbreviated rules in advertising as long as they point to where the full rules are published.
• Although rules still need to be published you can now satisfy that requirement by posting them to a website.
• The timing of which a winner must claim prize (from which he/she is notified) is still listed as 30 days, with and added exception of ”unless otherwise specified in the official rules”.
To view the full Regulation, please visit the Department of Consumer Affairs in Puerto Rico (DACO) at: http://www.gobierno.pr/daco/inicio.