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The 3 elements of illegal gaming are prize, payment and chance. Eliminate one of these and your operation may now qualify as a contest, rather than illegal gaming.

There are a few different options available to you in order to eliminate the element of chance or randomness from your contest. Under the Criminal Code of Canada, there are no offences which apply specifically to games of pure skill, subject to certain conditions being met, so a contest based on pure skill is one option for franchisors to avoid application of the Code to their contest. Just think of the possibilities of promoting a franchised brand that can derive from a skill-based contest. Maybe a pizza-recipe contest where the winner gets the pizza named after them. Maybe a pet grooming contest for your pet store. The possibilities really are endless and can be customized to suit and promote your brand.

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However, you should speak with a lawyer about this before running a skill-based contest which requires a fee for entry. This is because there is an important distinction at law between a pure-skill game and a ‘mostly’ skill game, mixed with chance. Another way to deal with the question of chance in your contest is to add skill to the random selection process by way of the famous skill-testing question. It may come as a surprise to some, but we actually have case law in Canada which has instructed us on the sufficient degree of difficulty that a skill-testing question must have in order to truly constitute skill to complete it. This is why all or most skill-testing questions that you see in contests are four-part mathematical questions with 2 to 3 digit numbers employing the BEDMAS equation which we all learned in elementary school math classes.

Chad Finkelstein is a franchise lawyer at Dale & Lessmann LLP in Toronto and can be reached atcfinkelstein@dalelessmann.comor (416) 369-7883.