As regular visitors to Mass Hibsteria and its message board will know, The Cat is a man of letters. If there's a complaint to be made, The Cat will put pen to paper and wax lyrical to "whom it may concern" on behalf of himself and the Hibee Nation.

Recently I wrote to Scotsport on the subject of two issues. The first, which has been covered ad nauseum, is the ill-informed rambling of the "ex-Hibernian non-great" Andy Wanker. My second complaint, as a regular "comper" was about Scotsport’s weekly "Dream Ticket" competition.

On January 5 I wrote: "Can you tell me why your competitions do not have a NPN (no purchase necessary) route of entry? And why are do so many of the prizes have nothing to do with the SPL? Surely, as a Scottish Football programme, you should be promoting Scottish football instead of offering trips outwit Scotland. I look forward to your comments."

Over two weeks later I finally received a reply, which went: "Thanks for your email.  To apply for the Scotsport SPL competition, you have to either phone or text.  Either of these two methods cost the competition entrant money, therefore it would be false to claim NPN.

Regarding Scottish prizes, since the programme began, there have been a
number of Scottish football prizes including tickets to:

old firm matches
Rangers match in UEFA Cup
Celtic matches (home and away) in UEFA Champions League
two Scotland internationals

in addition to English Premiership matches.

Our Dream Ticket competition is a prize to watch an excellent game of
football which can be appreciated by supporters of any team and which will
be enjoyable based on the standard of football within the game.

I hope this answer is satisfactory, thanks again for your email."

The Cat, being The Cat, was not satisfied with this response for two reasons. Firstly, they hadn't actually answered my original question but secondly they underlined their own bias towards the Old Firm by listing the prizes they had offered. Where were the tickets to the Edinburgh and Dundee derbies or for games involving other SPL clubs? By offering tickets to matches involving the Old Firm they are alienating a huge number of viewers (those who support the other ten SPL clubs) and these viewers will not enter their competition.

Having said that, I was concerned that the competition itself was "illegal". As a keen "comper", I am aware that competition entrants should not have to pay to enter a competition and many promoters offer No Purchase Necessary routes into their prize draw. However, to enter Scotsport's "Dream Ticket" you can only text or phone to exorbitant premium lines.

I wrote to Edwin Mutton, Director-General of the Institute of Sales Promotions (ISP) to ask for his opinion. After directing him to the competition on Scotsport’s website he replied thus:

“Please see below what our legal consultant (Mike Slipper) had to say.

Unless you wish to take this further yourself, I will write to the promoter along the lines of Mike's reply and warn them that what they are doing is illegal perhaps you would let me know.

Kind regards

Edwin

"As there is no 'no cost' entry route available it would appear that an illegal lottery has been created because winning will depend purely and literally on the luck of the draw. Anyone who bothers to enter will give the correct answer to the question.

However, as you know, the BBC (amongst others) runs these types of activity all the time and the authorities appear to show no interest in challenging them. The only slight difference is that in most cases the BBC entry cost is up to 60p, but that makes no difference to the principle.

As additional points, it is interesting that here T & C 8 refers to notifying the winner 'at our earliest convenience', whilst T & C 11 tells people that travel insurance must be purchased and T & C 12 tells them that both travellers must hold a valid passport. I know that Highbury is a long way north of where I live but that is ridiculous! They would have done better to warn people that 'normal football travel and admittance restrictions apply'.

Perhaps if the Gambling Bill eventually becomes law the authorities will be 'woken up', but at the moment it troubles me that we give best advice knowing that there are many examples such as this which will remain unchallenged."

Edwin asked me if I would like to challenge Scotsport personally on this matter but I decided that I didn’t want to affect any chance I would have of winning, although they probably know where the complaint originated!

It will be interesting to see how, and if, the Dream Ticket changes over the next few weeks. The Cat will of course keep all Mass Hibsterians up-to-date with any developments.

The Cat

Mass Hibsteria

21 January 2005