How Sweepstakes Work

Sweepstakes were invented as marketing tools to drum up interest for a product or sales. But winning them can be fun and as they’ve proliferated an entire subculture of people who enter hundreds of them a day. Enter the fascinating world of sweepstakes today!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there.
And you may already be a winner because you're listening

(00:21):
to Stuff you Should Know the podcast. I was going
to say, a version of the same thing. So, hey,
that's the that's the spoils of doing the intro. That's right,
you may be a winner, yep, chump sweep steaks. Yeah, man,
So I was aware of sweepers before that. There's this

(00:42):
group of people out there, Yeah, the hobbyists, people who
enjoy sweepstakes, and we'll talk about them later. Um. But
as I got more and more into like researching sweepstakes,
I'm like, wow, that's pretty interesting stuff. There's a lot
more to it than even that. Yeah. I have never
I don't think, entered any contest. Well, you know what,

(01:03):
I fully take that back, because almost every year I
entered the HDTV Dream Home, do you really Yeah, Well
that's like one of the big sweepstakes in the United States. Yeah, well,
I mean every year that I sort of remember. I
haven't had cable TV for a few years, so I'm
not reminded as much. But that's one of those Like,
I mean, have you ever entered have you ever seen

(01:24):
those houses? Yeah, I've ran across them during this research,
and yeah, they're very beautiful. Not only that, they don't
stop with the house. They'll give you like a GMC
yukon and like, here's half a million dollars in cash. Yeah,
it's gotten crazy. Now, you know, here's some Um, here's
a couple of snakes that are really exotic and expensive.

(01:44):
I think they do a green home as well. Now.
I think there are a couple of them and one
of them, I think the green home one year was
you know, saren By here outside of Atlanta. I think
one of them was at saren By. Yeah, there's one
that they gave away in the last year, so on
a merite island in Florida where I've been. Um. And
then there was one in I want to say Miami

(02:07):
or something, and I write about the person who won.
Actually it was written in the Miami Herald. I don't
remember where the house was, but they couldn't afford it.
They won and they were like, I can't afford the
taxes on this house. Yeah, that's what the you know,
growing up everyone's dad basically, well, you know, you gotta
pay taxes on that stuff, right was I would find

(02:29):
a way to work that out if I want an HTV, GTV,
Green Home whatever. But I mean if you all of
a sudden were like, I don't have fifteen thousand dollars
for taxes, and I mean I think that's the same
with game shows and stuff. Right. Oh yes, As a
matter of fact, Chuck, you can read all about that
in our chapter on the Perfect Prices right Game, which
is in our stuff you should know colon an incomplete

(02:52):
compendium of mostly interesting things book. That's right, And I
gotta tell you of I'm trying to think. I think
of all the chapters in that book, that might be
the one that I was the most jealous of. From
the podcast standpoint, what do you mean, like putting it
on as a podcast rather than being a book chapter.

(03:13):
I was like, oh, man, I still want to do
that as a podcast. Maybe, you know, maybe one day
we can. Yeah, I don't think there's anything stopping us
from doing that. I think we might want to wait
a little while. Nope, we're doing it next week. I
don't want to undercut the book sales. Well, no, we
definitely won't want but well, I mean, I think we're
totally fine to do any and all that one out
of all of them will be the most difficult because

(03:34):
it's such a straightforward story, but I'm sure we'll find
a way to plump it up. I wonder if that
would incentivize people to buy the book if we did
an episode from one book chapter and said do you
want uh, you want more? Yeah, like how many more?
How many chapters are there? Again? For yeah, you want
twenty six more stories? If you're reading, get the book pleasures,

(03:58):
especially if you put it all off chord in vaguely
hostile like this. Yeah, I think that's that's that's the
old publishing trick hostility, right, or assertiveness when Poe moved
a lot of books that way? He did so uh
oh yeah, you can order a book now, pre order

(04:18):
anywhere you order books, including indie bound and uh, didn't
you come with the bit ley If you want to
support black owned bookstores, you can go to a bit
dot lee slash s y s k b LM in
order it from there. Uh so that's our spiel, which
actually was organic. It's not at all scripted. Don't think that.
Um if if you did, then you obviously missed the

(04:42):
clumsiness in all of it. But we're not talking about
our book today. We're talking about sweep steaks, sweep steaks,
and in fact, sweep steaks chuck. The word itself, sweep
steaks is hundreds of years old. I think they found
its origin at least in the thirteenth century. Yeah, because
is back then, um they were you had steak in

(05:04):
it like you would buy. It was kind of like
a lottery. You would get a bunch of people to
throw in money for a ticket and it probably wouldn't
even a ticket, and some person would win and so
they would sweep the stakes. But it's not like that. Uh,
competition in the UK, a contest in Canada, sweep stakes
in America. Those are different because they are always no

(05:26):
purchase necessary. That's the differentiator, right. The one thing that
they have in common with those is that the winner
takes all. That's the point. There's like a grand prize
where this this one person wins the prize, you sweep
the stakes, right, Um, But that is totally different from
a lottery, and a lottery is self sustaining. So much
so that you fund educational systems with lottery proceeds. That's

(05:48):
how self sustaining it is. With the sweep stakes, it's like, well,
there's one person putting up the prize, but then somebody
else comes along and wins it. What does that person
who puts the prize have to stand to gain from it?
And that the answer to that question is the heart
of sweep Steaks, which is basically publicity. That's where they
came from. Sweep Steaks or like you said, competitions in

(06:10):
the UK, your contests in Canada. They were born in
maybe the forties fifties for sure, as a marketing and
advertising tool that some companies and salesman came up with
to basically move more stuff at the very least get
people interested in some item or product that would have
otherwise just been overlooked in a regular ad. Yeah, and

(06:32):
sometimes it was UM and still can be very blatant
in that. Uh the there's a like a code on
a product UM, and you like, well, this has no
purchase necessary. But sometimes you can actually buy a product
that has a code that you can then UM enter
like a UPC symbolship. Then so sometimes you do have

(06:53):
to buy things. But uh, sometimes it is literally just
we have and it you have to be a new thing.
But oftentimes is a new product maybe from an old stable,
like a new kind of toothpaste from um Pepsident or something,
or coal Gate, and they're just trying to drum up

(07:14):
pr and a good way to do it is to
give away fifty grand and get people just in that
aisle of the store, right, and so have them say like, well,
I need some toothpaste. I normally get coal Gate, but oh,
Pepsident has a fifty sweepstakes right now, I'm just gonna
buy the PEPs in at this not too yeah, how
can I lose? And they hopefully from that point on

(07:37):
they'll keep buying PEPs in it. Right, So that's a
way to drum up sales. Um But you said something
that was really important. One of the things that differentiates
the sweepstakes on purpose from say like a lottery is
that there's no purchase necessary to win. And in the
United States, no purchase necessary is like just common vernacular.
Everybody knows that phrase. That came from what's no inn

(08:00):
as sweep steakes law, which is to get around rules
and regulations against lotteries in the United States, Yeah, gambling.
One of the ways that that they did that was
to create this other way to enter you didn't like, Yes,
if you bought this tube of toothpaste, you automatically had
your your entry form right there because it came with

(08:20):
the package. But if you didn't want to buy the toothpaste,
but you still wanted to enter the sweepstakes, they had
to afford a way for you to get an entry
form and enter without any kind of purchase whatsoever, and
then that entry had to be as valid or eligible
to win. Um, have the same chances of winning as

(08:40):
somebody who did make the purchase. No purchase necessary to win. Yeah.
The other thing is sweep steaks will do is give
you and this has changed over the years obviously, but
give a salesperson a lead. You got to get those
Glengarry leads or you're or you're on the way out
the door with uh no job basically. So in the

(09:01):
old days, it was, um, let's say there was like
a sweepstakes if you bought a blender. If you didn't
buy the blender, but you entered the sweepstakes, at least
there would be your information to blender sales people that
would be like, well they were looking at blenders, I
know that much or else they wouldn't have even known
about this these days. Um. Obviously, like with social media,
that's a big way that it's done. It's all done virtually,

(09:25):
so they know that if you just click on something
to enter a sweepstakes, then all of your information can
be sent to whatever company that is. And that's why
you're gonna start seeing if you enter some like ari
I sweepstakes or something. Don't be surprised when in your
in your social media feed you start seeing nothing but
ads for outdoor gear, right exactly. But it's it's so

(09:45):
it's kind of updated for the century, but it's the
same principle. You're saying, I'm interested in blenders, please send
me all the advertising you can find on blenders. Um.
And that was how it was before, when you send
in your info by hand or put it in a
box in the store. It's the same thing now when
you enter to win an online sweepstakes and you share

(10:06):
your contact info like that. It's just now we call
it data mining and rather than the blender salesman getting
in touch with you to see if you still want
to Blender that you didn't win. It's some third party
marketing company that is getting in touch with you because
your information was sold to them. Uh, because you entered
into that Blender sweepstakes. So it's different, it's updated, but

(10:27):
the points the same. Sweepstakes are there to increase brand awareness,
to generate buzz or hype around a new product. It's
a form of advertising, um, and it's a way to
generate leads for sure. Uh. The thing is they were
huge in the fifties and the sixties, and one of
the reasons that they took off um was because the
Reader's Digest. Actually, yeah, read Reader's Digest, the little tiny

(10:51):
magazine that everyone's grandmother had, uh, and that you would read.
You know, laughter is the best medicine. And what was
the other one that was a couple of like very
kid friendly, regular things. The joke one meth meth meth.
I think it was meth myth meth all exclamation points.
Now there was another thing. It may have been like

(11:12):
true stories that were also funny. But I remember reading
Reader's Digest a lot as a kid, which is hysterical
because it's so not kid friendly. So the point is
is they go through and read magazine articles and then
condense them down to like abbreviated versions. Is just the
broad strokes, right, I think so, Like I never got
that back then, but I think it's sort of like
a a dummies version of the Utney Reader from what

(11:35):
I can tell. Man, it's so bizarre. Yeah, so they would, um, yeah,
what a weird concept? Is it still around? Oh yeah,
Reader's ide just is definitely still around. I guess it's
like the antithesis of long form where they're just like,
we don't need all that stuff. Here's the main babe.
I'd like to get my hands on a reader's digest
and and see what it's like these days. And a

(11:56):
shawl nice toily because it gets a little so. Uh.
That was always the joke with growing up in my
church was whenever the keenagers, which is what they called
the old folks, it's adorable, um would have an outing
that the lady this one woman would get up and
say it, uh, you know'd be like July and she'd
say and remember to bring us weeater at the end

(12:19):
of it it didn't matter what time of year, that's adorable,
got to bring us sweater. Um. So and of course
that's a just to make fun of. Dude. It's so
funny you said, because I was about ten fifteen years
from now, we're really gonna backs against the wall a thing. Yeah, no, No,
that's not what I was saying. Okay, I was saying,

(12:40):
we're gonna get called out for a just offhand remarks,
I know, and we're going to be cold both because
we're gonna be old, bring us sweater. So. Uh, Reader's
Digest had a a form and they were very upfront
about their sweepstakes. Um, it was preprinted, it had a
number there and you could just fill it out and

(13:00):
mail it back. And Reader's Digest was trying to sell
subscriptions and um, you know publishers clearing houses obviously the
elephant in the room. Um, the big daddy of all
sweep Steaks, which is another weird, weird company when you
think about it, very especially today. Yeah, I mean magazine
subscription sales. But that's where the company started out. It

(13:22):
was a magazine subscription salesman who went door to door
and said, you know what nuts to going door to door.
I'm just gonna drum up are brochure and mail it
out to people. And he started getting responses like that
so much so that he put this company, Publishers clearing
House together and then when they became like a household,
word was when they attached sweep steaks to it, like
Readers Died, just to demonstrate it was so effective. Because

(13:45):
like with Reader's Digest or Publishers Clearing House or whatever, ultimately,
at the end of the day, they're trying to sell
you something like you said, Reader's, I just was trying
to sell you a subscription. They're attaching the sweepstakes to
it because they're they're using that age old lever of Hey,
everybody check it out. It's a big deal. We're giving
away a million dollars and also here's everything you need
to order as many subscriptions as you like from us.

(14:07):
Do you have any magazine subscriptions? Yeah, We've got Dwell,
which is no longer to my taste, like I don't
like current modern design in architecture and decor today right now.
But we also have one from L Decor. That one

(14:27):
is very much up my alley. There's a lot of
color and stuff like that. Um, we have Men's Health
and g Q, I think, which is not paying off
our lot because I dressed terribly and I'm overweight at
the moment, big time. Uh we Emily gets um. She
gets a few home magazines. I think like, like you guys,

(14:50):
we we both share our love of like architecture and
stuff like that, so we we like looking and fantasizing
about like these amazing places. That's why I entered the
dream home thing. Every year. I know, it's kind of
like a little mini vacation to go through one of
those magnor it's also fun to judge and be like, oh,
you paid a million dollars for that, you chump. Why
don't you get some taste? But did I say to

(15:12):
the magazine. What I'll never be though, is the person
on HDTV House Owners that walks through and goes she's
I don't know about this place, Look at that ceiling fan.
Do they do that on house Owners? Oh? People, I
mean it's all set up anyway. House owners, they already
have the house when they go on the show. It's
it's a big scam. But uh yeah, there are people
that say, like, you know this ceiling fan or this

(15:34):
wall paper, and they're like, that's really easy to change,
my friend, And the producers off camera, they're like, can
you actually like stick your finger down you throw them
and make yourself vomit. It will really really pay off.
All right, I think we should take a break and
come back and talk a little bit more about sweepstaks.
How about that, let's do it. I want to learn

(16:01):
about a terrosortic college, how to take a perfect movement,
all about fractalskiscon Hun, the Lizzie Border murders, that all
runs on the plane, everything we should know. Word up, Jerry, Okay, Chuck.
So we've been talking about that h g TV Dream
Home giveaway, UM, and there's good reason because it is

(16:23):
one of the big ones, but it's also one of
the easiest to understand. Um. If you go and read
up on hd TVs Dream Home UH sweepstakes, you're gonna
find there's a very clear reason that they give away
this huge prize with all of this money and cars
and all this stuff, because I guess they build the
home over the course of like a season and then

(16:46):
they give it away, so part of then it right.
So they're generating UM viewers for the TV show, which
is supported by advertising, and the more viewers you have,
the more you can charge for ads. UM so the
sweepstakes is just basically being used to generate buzz for
the TV show now or vice versa, maybe both, but

(17:07):
the point is there. It's paying off for them, which
is why they keep giving this stuff away. But I
have a soft spot in my heart for this one
because they are one of these uh few giant sweepstakes
that just say here's how it's done, ask us whatever
question do you want? This is all very much on
the up and up. Yeah, and it's also, um just

(17:29):
a big advertising benanza period. So not only are you
getting that GMC suv, it's like frigid air and like
I guarantee, every single thing in that house has some
sort of sponsorship attached to it, like from the siding
down to the to the dude who poured the concrete.
You know, I'm sure they all donate that stuff for
in kind advertising. You know, that's a Tommy Thompson brand

(17:51):
concrete job. It's double stamped. But yeah, HDTV is very cute,
like they they have a um I think they actually
have a regular drawing, not even a computerized drawing, like
they do it the old fashioned way, right dude, Yes
they should. But I just had a stroke of genius.
We should get h G t VS Dream Home sweepstakes

(18:14):
to sponsor this episode. That would be great, that would
be full circle. Yeah, and maybe put your thumb on
the scale for one of us. Yeah right, you know. Yeah,
so um with the with the dream Home giveaway. The
way that they hold the sweepstakes um is through what's
called a random drawing method where if you enter, you

(18:35):
can enter by mail, I believe, which is the old standard,
old fashioned standard way. You can also do it online,
which is far in a way the much more common
way to do it now do it. But either way
you're going to have your entry placed into a bin.
They have actual physical bins, like I get the impression
it's of fifty five gallon drum and your entry, your

(18:57):
physical paper entry goes into that drum. Or fit's online,
it goes into a virtual bin. And then at the
end of the contest, these bins have maybe like fifty
thou entries in them each and then they're they're sealed
off in a new been started and each bin's numbered right.
And then at the end of the contest they put
uh the number of ping pong balls is there are

(19:19):
bins put those in a lotto machine pick one, and
all of a sudden you have your bin number, And
now things are getting for real, are they not? They are?
And then uh, and I think that's what I like
about it. Two is the old school nature of it,
wherein like you're you're getting selected out of a hat essentially,

(19:39):
and you have just one a house. Well no, no,
not yet. Your bin has just been picked. You haven't
necessarily been picked out. You gotta tell them how old
school and low fi this is. Oh well, yeah, once
you get to the bin, I mean, don't they just
like dump it on the floor and literally pick it out. Yeah,
when they seal a bin, they give it a good
shake and a roll and all that. So that like

(20:00):
any so, so the the first entry isn't necessarily any
better off than the last entry. They're all mixed together
pretty well. But then yeah, they dump it onto the
floor and they take an HDTV employee, blindfold him or
her them, and push them towards the pile of envelopes,
hopefully without them falling down, although if they do, it's

(20:20):
on a pile of envelopes, so it's not too bad.
And then they just grope and grab one and that's
your winner. If it's a physical one. If it's virtual one,
a computer program runs through all the names in that bin,
and then the the the employee presses the space bar
and stops it. Either way, it's a random person picked
and I love it. You might as well be conducting
like a Catholic church fair drawing at that point, when

(20:45):
you have somebody blindfolded grabbing at a pile of envelopes.
That's the level that you're at. Yeah, you know. It
would make it even better, is if they is if
they did that, but instead of choosing the winner, they
chose like five different names, and then they had those
people come in and they had David Broms Dad's holding

(21:07):
up five match sticks with his hand in front of
the camera, and each person had to draw a match
stick and the longest stick wins the house. Who's David
Bromstad Is he from Stranger Things? No, he's he's HDTV. No,
that makes more sense than he's the guy that's like
now covered in tats that didn't used to be covered
in tats. No idea wa see the trainer who recently

(21:29):
had a heart attack, but now he's on this blood thinner.
I don't think so. He's uh. I mean now another
show he does is the is the Lottery dream Home.
Like he he gets lottery winners and tries to sell
them how or you know, shows them houses. I've never
heard of depressing show. Actually, yeah, I don't. We've done
one on lotteries before. But did we touch upon like

(21:53):
how tragic most lottery winnings are? Uh? Yeah, I think so. Yeah,
So I can imagine that show has been of a
downer if you really think about it, it can be. Yeah,
that's all I'm gonna say. Might have to start watching that.
I'm in the market for a downer TV show, So
thanks for that. Well, you would think a lottery dreamhouse
show would be like nothing but awesome in excitement. But no, no,

(22:16):
I think sometimes just the way people like to spend
their money can be depressing. Yeah, I'm with you, you
know what I'm saying. Yeah, I don't. I don't want
to judge if that's there. I don't want to yuck
their yum their dreamhouse. YU. Sure. Oh I see what
you're saying. I thought you meant like I just bought
one of the share of the Dallas Cowboys, so pretty valuable.

(22:38):
So that random drawing method is pretty um pretty standard.
That's kind of, from what I can tell, the gold
standard of sweep steaks. There's also one that's one of
the original ones, called the pre selected method, and this
is the one that was used to great effect for
many decades, and it's the one that UM Publishers clearing
House frequently uses to where the winning number is selected

(23:04):
first secretly and held in in confidence, and then a
bunch of numbers that have the same number of digits
as that that winner, including that actual winning string of numbers,
are put onto mailers for Publishers clearing House and mailed
out everywhere, Which is why they can say you may
already be a winner, because you could conceivably be holding

(23:25):
the winning envelope because the winning numbers already pre selected. Yeah,
as a kid in the seventies and eighties, we didn't
really fully get that. We saw an envelope with Ed
mcmayl's Ed mcmail ed McMahon. He should have been Ed
mcmayl with his name and face on it. You may
already be a winner some fake check written out to you. Uh.

(23:47):
Sadly a lot of people thought those were real checks.
There are stories about that we'll um. So I didn't
really fully get that, but I guarantee you that the
people that that participated in these things new that it
was a pre selected winner and if you are lucky enough,
you and you gotta pay attention, because what they kind

(24:09):
of counted on was that most of these omalosts get
thrown away, most of these prizes go unclaimed. I think
that ten of the prizes, uh were ever even awarded
for those early Publishers clearing House sweepstakes. Yeah that was
not just no, not even Publishers clearing House. I think
this might have been before then. This was like Colgate,
Paul malo in U and oil companies and soap companies

(24:31):
and toothpaste makers were all like using this pre selective
method and they would get all of the like the
attention and all of the advertising, but they would have
to give out none of the money because the chances
are that nobody that the winner or the person with
the winning package didn't go to the trouble of actually
taking it back to the store, and so they would
get all the advertising without any of the having to

(24:53):
give up any of the money. And so um, this
actually got a lot of bad press. Um it led
to FTC hearings that later led to congressional hearings that
that created some legislation we'll talk about later. But the
upshot of it is that it caused companies that have
sweepstakes to create what's called the second chance drawing, which is,

(25:14):
let's say, you know, you preprint the all of these
entries and send them out. One of them has this
pre selected winning combination that that dilutes the chances so
tremendously that the chances are the grand prize is not
going to go anywhere. But with a second chance drawing,
you have a smaller prize, say like the grand prize
is a ten million dollars, second chance drawing grand prize

(25:35):
might be one million, and you select the winner from
the entries that were returned, so it's guaranteed that somebody
is going to win that second chance drawing. That seems
to have appeased the town folk with their pitchforks and torches. Yeah,
because a publisher's clearing house grand prize winner is the
odds are astronomical, um Like the one thousand a dollar

(25:58):
day for Life is one in six point two billion,
um Like powerball is a is a great deal. When
you compare it against something like that, and and pc
H is pretty um, pretty tight liped. It's hard to
get a ton of information about exactly how it works
and and why it would be six point two billion,

(26:18):
because it's not like there's that many people entering. There's
there's no way that's happening. No, And I genuinely I
looked so high and low and and the weirdest little
crevasses of the Internet trying to get an answer to this,
and I could not find it. The only thing that
I can imagine is that it has to do with

(26:38):
the number of entries put out there. But they're certainly
not printing out and sending six point to billion mailers.
They're just is it the sweepers like doing this thousands
and thousands of time? Which it's possible. That's it's possible,
because I did. I did see people say like, the
chances are so high because they get so many entries.
But what you're talking about is that would be almost

(27:00):
every single person on Earth entering, which isn't the chance,
which isn't happening, or every single person in the United
States um entering seventeen times. I guess if you have
some sweepers, hardcore sweepers, and enough of them it could
drive the chances up that high. But it just seems
like there must be some other something to do with,
like the randomly generated number, something that has to do

(27:24):
with driving up the sticks, because, like you said, power
ball seems like easy. Straight power balls chances are one
in two nine million. This Publisher's clearinghouses one in six
point two billion. And the reason for this huge discrepancy
is because they're structured differently. When you play Powerball, you
have to pick five numbers from a pool of sixty

(27:44):
nine numbers, and then one powerball from a pool of
twenty six numbers. And when you calculate the um factorials together,
which is our words that I put together, I think
I combine them accurately, but I have no do what
I'm talking about this point you have a one Any

(28:04):
any combination you choose has a one in two million
chances of being right because there's two d million possible combinations.
It's very black and white. Yeah, totally understandable. Even if
you don't know what factorials are, how they work, you
can get that. But again with Publisher's clear House, it's
like point A minute. How how is this possible at all?

(28:25):
One in six point two billion, I cannot find out how. Yeah, well,
one thing is for sure if you do win, And
this was kind of uh, it kind of made me
feel a little bit better. If you do win, Uh,
they're gonna find you. And I thought this is sort
of the opposite of how it would be. I thought
they would be like, no, you gotta come to us,
and we're really not going to make much of an effort.
But they do. They find you. They will use the

(28:47):
Private detective to find you and track you down concrete
pouring in Private Detective Agency. There's a p and executive
who testified during those FTC trials in the late sixties.
It says they every resource to find anything any winner
over five hundred dollars and um. Usually the winner comes forward.

(29:08):
But I guess it's good to know that they do
make an exceptional effort. Um. And you can't you can't
have grown up in the seventies and eighties without knowing
about Ed McMahon and Dick Clark and the Publisher's clearing
House Prize patrol coming to people's houses with balloons and
confetti and champagne and a giant check and knocking on

(29:31):
your door with a camera crew like that was as
much as of America as like a baseball and apple
pie basically for sure. And like you know, people talk
about the Mandela effect and the Baron Stain Bears effects
and all that. Um, a lot of people associated Dick
Clark especially but also um, I mean McMahon especially, but
also Dick Clark too with Publishers clearing House. They never

(29:54):
once pitched or worked for publishers in that body to
this day people even by back then, I saw a
contemporary article that was, like, you know, confuse them with
Publishers clearing House. They worked for American Family Publishers, which
was a knockoff also ran for Publishers clearing House. Um,
they never once pitched for Publishers clearing House. Publishers clearing

(30:15):
House has always had that prize patrol that shows up
at your house, um, and that's always been Publishers clearing
House employees. And they apparently are legit, Like if you win,
they don't get in touch with you ahead of time,
they just show up at your house. Or if you're
not home, you're on vacation, they'll show up where you're vacationing.
They'll show up at work wherever you are. They're going

(30:36):
to show up with these camera crews and UM give
you this grand prize. So that apparently is is legitimate. Yeah,
And if you want to be a um party buzz
kill pet ant along the order of uh, it's actually
the um Low on the Totem Pole as the prize
place to be, then just start floating that American Family

(30:57):
Publishers fact to people that you meet. Is that right?
Because I love that? Oh man, I need to I'm
not going to be able to help myself. I think
if I was at a random party, if this had
never happened, and I was at a random party and
said something about I told a great story about Ed
mcman and Dick Clark and Publishers clearing House, and someone said, well,
actually they worked for American Family Publishers. I don't think

(31:19):
there's any way to frame that in a way that
makes that person look good or fun. It's all in
the delivery. You laugh along and be like that's crazy.
But even get this, it's even crazier. Have never even
worked for Publishers clearing House And everybody triple laughs on
top of the laughing they're already doing. It just goes
dead and you're left going. But I but I've framed

(31:41):
it correctly, said it's been an engaging way. I said, well,
actually with my finger up. Uh. And then I would say, yeah,
but what about that Bloopers and Practical Joke show. Then
everyone will be laughing again and you just slink off
in the corner. I would, And you know that's that's
my typical party behavior anyway. Do you remember that show though?

(32:02):
Oh yeah, totally. Like it was called Bloopers and Practice.
I believe it's all it was. It was. It was
like the title was the description that was great. Remember
they had the aragon Is cartoon guy who come and
sweep the stage totally. Um, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's
what it was. Fantasy Island. Do you know they re

(32:23):
rebooted Fantasy Island. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't watch. It
was supposed to be super dark. Well the first one was. No,
wasn't the original fantay sild was super dark. I need
to go back and watch that because I don't recall
that at all. Yeah, like almost all the fantasies were
ended up being scary and taught the person a lesson
they should really like fantasize about. Well I was like

(32:46):
four at the time, and and pick up on that
it is, by the way, it is TV's bloopers and
practical bloopers and practical jokes. Yeah, uh all right, let's
take a break and we'll talk about the very very
few sweep steaks that are in existence today. Right after this,

(33:09):
I want to learn about as art college how to
take the perfect. But with all about fractal getting kiscon
that's a little hun the Lizzie Border murders that they
kind of all runs on the plane. Everything that's we
should know. No word up Jerry. By the way, Chuck,
TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes has a five point three

(33:29):
on IMDb, which is wrong. Really, Yeah, that was a
great show man, And I bet you that dumb Saggat
show has got like a nine out of ten. Well
these days it's Alfonso Riberro is it. Yeah, I've never
been a fan of this. They're okay, ridiculousness. Uh no,

(33:51):
I never saw that. That's all it is. But it's
much more like painful to watch, like skateboarders getting racked
and just really dumb stuff. But it's it's mesmerizing, and
somehow they have an infinite limitless supply of episodes of
it because it is on twenty four hours a day
on MTV. Is there really? Yeah? I think I told

(34:12):
this story before, but I like to put it out
every five or six years in case the person listening
is this person. Uh is when I was at u
g A one day and a guy I saw a
guy completely busted on a bicycle on the sidewalk and
his books went splayed out everywhere, and the very first
thing he did was put his and he was laying

(34:33):
down on the sidewalk, was put his hand under his
chin and act like he was reading a book. Oh
my god, it's amazing. And like, if you're out there, dude,
please please send us an email stuff podcast at I
heart media dot com because that was one of the
best reactions I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, that's
that's a sharp, sharp dude. It was pretty great. So

(34:53):
before we broke, I uh was being coy about the
very very few sweepstakes that we still have today, because
surely these went out of style in the seventies and eighties. Uh,
not true. There are about four hundred million the annual
sweep steaks in this day and age, and that nuts
that is And I'm sure that counts every dumb iPhone

(35:15):
app sweepstakes to win ten cents, but that's still four million. Yeah,
that's still a sweepstakes that you can go play, whereas before,
I think at its first heyday UM in the sixties
the mid sixties, the FTC calculated there was something like
six hundred national sweep steaks and yeah, four millions, a
lot more than six hundred. What's crazy is is those

(35:36):
FTC um hearings actually tried to put a clamp down
on everything and it didn't work and they ended up
expanding and exploding even beyond that. But one of the
things that has kind of um driven that, I don't
know if it's it's got to be a chicken or
the egg kind of thing, like has it been these
people who are called sweepers or in the UK they're

(35:56):
called compers, who their hobby is engaging and sweeps. Did
they lead to this proliferation of it or did they?
Are they encouraged by the easy access to sweepstakes like
never before? What do you think? I don't know because
I didn't know sweepers existed. I didn't know that there
were people that would spend um, you know, sometimes a

(36:18):
couple of hours a day, randomly or not randomly, very
pinpointedly looking for and registering for all kinds of sweepsteaks,
using spreadsheets, using their auto fill on their computers, just
to enter to win, over and over and over again. Yeah,

(36:38):
but they're out there, and it's a subculture that I
I'm surprised there's not There may be a documentary about them,
I don't know. I haven't run across any any mention
of one. There's a really good Zachary Crockett article Zachary Crockett,
amazing writer who I don't know if he still writes
for prison Onomics or not, but just amazing. He of
course did one on this subculture. But he said that

(36:58):
like a good, you know, normal sweeper, somebody who's like
a genuine hobbyist is doing this for hours and hours
a day and entering up to hundreds of sweepstakes every day. Hundreds, Yeah,
hundreds award like Christmas story, that's what they call them
in in the I should say. So. There was a

(37:20):
Slate article from two thousand three, and it had a
lot of just blatantly factual errors, um or blatant factual
errors and was really arrogant and like dismissive towards this
this group. So it's possible they don't call them major awards,
but that's where I got that from. But the the
lingo was m A that they're after the m A

(37:43):
big cash payouts, cars, boats, major awards that are not
necessarily fred gila. Yeah, and it's um, it's still the
same sort of uh, like we said with with social media,
it's a little bit different how it goes, but it's
still the same kind of aim, which is to build
brand recognition. Um. You see major brands doing these sort

(38:05):
of fun games, like a Jeep hit those tiki torches.
This is sort of like a scavenger hunt. You had
to go around and find these torches. There were clues
on Facebook. You went a wrangler if you found all
the torches. And that's good for Facebook, it's good for Jeep,
it's probably good for tiki torches. But every you know,
every department store on the planet has some sort of

(38:27):
even very minor like here's a fifty dollar gift card
kind of thing if you retweet this or whatever, Like
those are just all over the place. Now all over
there's a site called, um sweep Steaks. What is it
called sweet uh sweep Steaks Hub? I think so. I mean,
if that's not what it's called, it might as well
be called that. I can't find it right now. Well,

(38:49):
we'll see if we can call it out later. But
I went to it today, and I mean, dude, there's
a sweepstakes for everything. There's a new podcast out and
they're giving away like Amazon all xa um just to
just to generate interest and awareness of their podcast. It's
like everything has some sort of sweep steaks. Like if
you got a new book, give away five books? We

(39:11):
should do this. You give away five books and then
hopefully everybody's like, well, I didn't win, but that book
sounds pretty great. I'm going to go ahead and buy
that book. Or at the very least, now I'm on
a mailing list for this publisher because I've just shown
them that I like books enough to enter into the
sweep steaks. Is that podcast? Let me ask you this.
Can you listen to it on iTunes, I Heart media
app or wherever you find your podcasts? Probably interesting? They're

(39:35):
doing something right, Yeah, they are. I'm gonna find the
name of that podcast because we can't. We can't mentioned
a podcast like that and just just never give the name.
So I'm gonna do a little researching while you tap
dance for us. Okay, okay, one and a two. So
uh yeah, at least four million sweep steaks today. Um. Now,

(39:56):
the like you said, the FTC got involved. They held
hearings and everything is on the up and up. Now, Um,
you have to and and I'm sure this is all
very much spelled out as far as like you have
to clearly explain the rules and clearly explain your chances
of winning. Um. And I'm sure that's very much mandated
on what clearly means. They're not just like yeah, whatever

(40:17):
you think is clear as fine with us. Yeah, Congress
actually got involved in passed an act. Yeah and what night,
Well when was that? Okay? Yeah, I mean that's that's
what Congress does sometimes, right, But that's I mean the
reason why is because there were there are a few
cases that sort of troubled people, to say the least. Yeah,

(40:41):
the they passed the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act,
also known as the Sweepstakes Act, and there was one
case in particular that really pushed everything over the edge. Yeah,
this elderly man in his eighties, Um, he lived in California,
and uh, with his own money, he flew not once
but twice to Tampa to the American Family Publisher's headquarters

(41:06):
to claim his prize money because if he got he
gotten a mailer that said that he was already a winner.
Apparently the actual label said final results are in and
they're official. You're our newest eleven million dollar winner. And
then if you read the fine print, it was like
if you have the winning number. This man flew twice
to calif to Tampa to collect on two different prizes

(41:28):
because of mailer's twice and they finally said enough enough.
I can just picture him on the plane and like
telling his seat mate like what's going on, and then
not knowing what to do quite frankly, well, yeah, imagine
being the seat mate's like sea checks take this letter out, yeah,
and you're just like, oh no, this is not gonna
go well for this, Like what do you do there?

(41:49):
Do you? I would, honestly, I wouldn't know what to
do because that that hits me right where it hurts,
which is uh to be kind and empathetic, but also
to not let someone go through something like terrible r
So I wouldn't. I would that that presents a real
ethical quandary for me. Well, I think I think at
that point you kind of say, Um, I'm gonna be late.

(42:10):
I have to go to American Family Publishers headquarters before
I come to the meeting because this guy, yeah, that
and coronavirus. Right. No, really, I just don't want to
take the chance of being next to someone going to
pick up their grand prize that doesn't exist. So so
they part of that UM, that Congressional Act is that,

(42:30):
like you really need to be a lot more clear
about the odds of winning. UM. You have to say
things like no purchase necessary or another phrases buying won't
help you win. UM. But the whole thing, from what
I understand, the whole thing. And by the way, American
Family Publishers is now defunct. They went under UM. Unfortunately,
fortunately for Publishers clearing House, they got all sorts of

(42:53):
free press because people used to just think American Family
Publishers was Publishers clearing House. But they also got all
the bad press too, because people would think that anything
American family Publishers did. It was actually Publishers clearing House.
So it was really weird. I think it is where
like two alternate universes kind of came together right there. Now,
which one was it? That? Uh, there was one case

(43:14):
where they were uh they had the entree entry entry envelopes,
the entree envelopes packaged in such a way that, uh,
you could tell the envelopes where people actually did buy
a subscription and where they didn't, even though they were
both supposed to be entered, which very easily allowed them
to just throw away the ones where they didn't actually

(43:35):
buy something. Was that pH or the other that was
Publishers clearing House And they were found their blood on
their hands to them throwing away hundreds of entries that
had no no check because again, remember what they're trying
to do is get you to subscribe to a bunch
of magazines or now they sell vitamins or housewears or
something like that. Um, and if you hadn't sent a
check in, apparently some big chunk of entries got just

(43:58):
thrown away. Well, and they you know you talked about
sweepstakes law, there was they did have to settle a
lot of lawsuits over the years, uh, civil lawsuits from contestants, so, uh,
you know there were people that were wise to it,
and there were attorneys out there very willing to take
those cases. I'm sure. Yeah, And I think over time
part of it was because of that pre selected thing

(44:19):
where UM people were like, what do you mean nobody
won the grand prize? People really paying attention to that
kind of stuff, and they would get sued and I
saw that they they paid tens of millions of dollars
to UM to settle some of these and fight some
of them too. So but they're still in business, which
means that they're still making so much money that they

(44:41):
it's it's worth UM holding these sweepstakes not just to
give the prizes away, but also to UM to uh
to fight off litigation as well. Yeah. And one way
that you can really kind of fight off litigation UM
is by hiring what's called sweepstakes administra reader. Yeah, Like

(45:02):
there are companies that will fully UM execute the contest
from beginning to end. You hire that. It's like hiring
a caterer. You don't have to worry about the the
little stuff mushrooms like they're gonna do it all they're
gonna come in administer it in a way that's above
board and legal. You don't have to worry about the hassle.
You just gotta pay them their big and uh and

(45:24):
you're all set right. It's hard to believe that there
are companies out there that do this, but there are
so as as much as like they're like pc seems
a little hustling. It is a legitimate sweepstakes company. It's
not a scam. But there are plenty of scams out there,
and in fact, pc H has to warn the public
how to look out for scams. One of the biggest

(45:44):
ways is that if you are contacted via email, phone, Facebook,
something like that, um saying that you won a big prize,
they're going that like that's automatically wrong because they send
their prize patrol out for their biggest prizes and that's
really legitimately. How you would find out is they show
up at your house. Yeah, and you know these are

(46:05):
all uh, they seem like no brainers to people like us,
but to a lot of people they fall for this
stuff and it's really sad. Um. You know, if you
if you get anything that says you've won something, all
you gotta do is prepay this tax any anything, asking
for credit card information, any kind of payment whatsoever. Is
one a scam every time, UM any time. A lot

(46:30):
of times it's front. It's a front for like UM mallware. UM.
They might ask you, like I said, for your social
Security number, your credit cards. Just don't don't fall for
that stuff. Don't give anyone information like that. No, and
you will need to give them your social Security number
eventually if you win any prize over six dollars for

(46:50):
tax reporting, because remember taxes are a thing. But they're
not going to get you up over Facebook messenger and
tell you you want a prize, So give me your
social Security number right now. The thing is is a
lot of people who play this are elderly, and they
are preyed upon, and there are a lot of scams
out there. UM. I saw some figure in the tens
of billions of dollars that is lost to scam sweepstakes

(47:12):
every year in the United States. That's insane. It's an
insane amount of money that's being lost. And let's just
say it is super sad. So the name of the
UM podcast is called UH The Authority with Brian s
Arnold um. And what's sad is they're in week eight

(47:32):
of their eight week giveaway sweepstakes giveaway, and so this
will come out long after the eight weeks is up,
so sorry about that. But there was a sweepstakes that
the The Authority Project with brianess Arnold held to win
a speaker. And you know what's interesting, this is not
off off topic, but over the years a couple of
times we've had a couple of dumb ideas like, hey,

(47:54):
why don't we give away a thing to listeners for,
you know, just doing something, And every single time, like
the legal department of whatever parent company we had, was like, no, no, no, no, no,
we're not going to get involved in this kind of
thing because then it's a contest where like, well it's
not really contest, it's just very low fly and they're like,
you can't do that. You have no idea the kind
of worms you're opening up. Yeah, because there's a whole

(48:15):
branch of law called sweepstakes law, and it it involves
following the letter of the law and also helping people
sue people who are suspected of not following the letter
of the law. Yeah, so as attorneys, they just kind
of always squashed it. Um, So I just want to
give a big shout out. We never said I don't
think why people do this real quick chuck um. And
there's a woman named Sandra Grauschoff and she is probably

(48:39):
the world's leading expert on sweepstakes at the very least
America's leading experts on on sweep steaks. She runs, um
the balance is sweepstakes pages and just legitimately knows what
she's talking about. And she just said it's excitement. It's
as simple as that. That like the idea of getting
a checker, Um, getting a prize affidavit in the mail

(49:00):
is very exciting. Um. Other people have called it a
high and Grauschof says, um, Yeah. It turns out, though,
if you're if you're thinking about sweep stakes every day
and how to play them better and all that stuff,
you may want to get evaluated for a gambling addiction
because it can kind of easily traps into that. I'm sure. Yeah,
who knew gambling addiction would make an appearance. So if

(49:25):
you want to know more about sweep stakes, well go
forward and check them out. Uh. And since I said that,
it's time for a listener mail I'm gonna call this
how he helps somebody out recently. Hey, guys, want to
say thanks before even telling you why. I honestly cannot
thank you enough. My name is James twenty one and
I'm from Glasgow, Scotland. Yesterday, while at work, I received

(49:48):
a call from my dad telling me that my grandma
had passed away suddenly during the night. Obviously distraught, I
left work headed home to be with my family. I
know that nobody enjoys crying, but I re really hated
and as I end up with these uh as, I
end up with these very intense headaches. Well through the tears.
On my drive home, with your podcast playing through my car,
I was able to laugh and to smile despite the circumstances.

(50:11):
I couldn't, for the life of me tell you which
episode I even listened to, just that it made me
laugh and save me from the literal headache and the
heartache that I was feeling. And for that I'm so thankful.
I must have listened to around two or three hundred
of your podcasts in the past month or so, so
please keep doing what you're doing. And that is from
James M. In Scotland. Sorry to hear about your grandma, James,

(50:32):
and I glad we could help. Our condolence is James.
But yeah, it is very nice to hear um. You
know that we we can help people in times like
that in some small way. You know for sure makes
us feel like real big shots. If you want to
get in touch with this, you can send us an
email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff

(50:56):
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where ever
you listen to your favorite shows. M h m hm