RS Rewards, one of Australia's biggest subscription giveaway platforms, has had its trade promotion licence cancelled by the NSW Department of Fair Trading.
That alone would be a story. But what makes it a bigger one is what happened next: the company kept running draws anyway.
According to an ABC News investigation published on April 1, NSW Fair Trading cancelled the licence after RS Rewards failed to comply with community gaming laws on multiple occasions. The department didn't specify how many times the laws were breached. RS Rewards and founder Billy Beasley did not respond to the ABC's requests for comment.
Despite the cancellation, RS Rewards has continued to run giveaways collectively valued at $890,000, including a Mercedes G-Wagon worth $250,000, according to the ABC's reporting. The company's current terms and conditions now exclude residents of New South Wales, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory from entering any draws, citing "regulatory restrictions."
That exclusion is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It effectively means anyone in those three jurisdictions who's been paying a monthly membership fee has been paying for a service they can't fully use. A Change.org petition from NSW residents describes exactly this problem, with multiple members saying they paid for months before discovering they weren't eligible to win anything.
What makes it worse is how easy it is to miss. The RS Rewards signup form asks for your first name, last name, email, and phone number. That's it. No state. No postcode. No address. There is nothing in the signup process that identifies where you live, and nothing that warns you before you pay that your state might be excluded from draws. The competition page itself doesn't mention the restriction either. You'd only find it buried in the terms and conditions, on a separate page, under a specific draw's promotion schedule.
That creates an obvious problem. If an existing member from NSW or the ACT wins a draw, what happens? Does RS Rewards verify their state after the fact and deny the prize? Do they quietly award it anyway, potentially breaching the same regulations that cost them their licence? Or does nobody check at all? Without a state field at signup, there's no mechanism to prevent ineligible residents from entering, which means either the exclusion isn't being enforced or winners are being turned away after the fact. Neither outcome is great for the person who's been paying $14.95 a month.
RS Rewards claims to have given away more than $10 million in prizes since launching, including sports cars and Gold Coast properties. The platform uses celebrity endorsers including former AFL player Brendan Fevola, who appears in promotional videos and helps announce winners. Founder Billy Beasley has styled the brand in a similar vein to MrBeast, the American influencer known for viral stunts and cash giveaways.
The licence cancellation raises questions that go well beyond one company. Gambling and gaming lawyer Jamie Nettleton of Addisons told the ABC that trade promotion licences were never designed for this kind of operation. They exist so businesses can run competitions that promote a product or service, like McDonald's Monopoly. They were never meant to replace gambling licences, which come with far stricter consumer protections.
And that's the gap. Platforms like RS Rewards operate without the safeguards that licensed gambling operators are required to provide: age verification, responsible gambling helplines, and self-exclusion registers.
For consumers, the immediate question is straightforward: if you're an RS Rewards member in NSW, SA, or the ACT, check the terms and conditions on whatever draw is currently running. If your state is excluded, you're paying for something you can't win.
The broader question is what this means for the giveaway industry as a whole. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on the operator.
Trade promotions and subscription giveaways are legal in Australia when run properly. Charity lotteries like Dream Home Art Union, Yourtown, and Mater operate under art union licences with strict state oversight and transparent draw processes. On the trade promotion side, operators like Motor Culture Australia have invested in third-party infrastructure like SafeDraw, a government-certified random draw system operated by Trade Promotions & Lotteries Pty Ltd, specifically to stay on the right side of the line. Queensland still requires any electronic random number generator used in promotions to be approved by the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation, with penalties of up to $28,750 per offence for non-compliance. That kind of regulatory burden is expensive, but it exists for a reason.
The RS Rewards situation is not the whole industry. But it is a reminder that not every operator treats compliance as non-negotiable. And until regulators close the gaps that allow a platform to lose its licence and keep running draws in other states, consumers need to do their own homework.
Check the permit numbers. Check which states are eligible. And if a platform can't even ask you where you live before taking your money, that tells you everything you need to know.