Instagram competition winners are always influencers or bloggers

[NemophilistRebel]

It’s clear to me that it’s not just a random winner after watching certain brands hold competitions and then when the winner is announced its a blogger of influencer with 1000’s of followers

Anyone noticed the same?
Is this practise even allowed?

No it's not, I use to work in competitions, the ASA has a huge number of rules around it and companies can be fined or have rulings made against them on the back of public complaints.

My friend once won £10k after entering a This Morning competition. She only told a few people, so I guess you just don't hear about the quieter winners, and a few loud winners make it seem disproportionate?

Yanb completety u.
I know few places who always told me "x won it" when I was handling social media accounts. X was always as you describe. But! Not all is lost. There was equal number of places who really did the right thing and winner was really picked randomly. Small businesses.

Mind me, these were small prices like a product worth a tenner

Okay so it's not the same as 'this morning' but DH owns a fairly well known brand within his industry and we do competitions sometimes.

We do it as one of the kids picks a random number up to however many people have commented, and that person wins, whether they have 10000 followers or 10. I've no idea whether that's the 'proper' way or not, but that's how we do it!

If you genuinely think this is the case, complain to the ASA. They will investigate, be told who the winners are and if they think something unfair is going on they will uphold the complaint.

Winners should be selected in a verifiably random way (if it's not a competition with an element of skill) and major prize winners' details are made public for transparency.

The competition rules are really strict. It wouldn’t surprise me though if some bloggers enter a lot so have a higher chance of winning or get invited to enter competitions that haven’t got a particularly high number of entries.

I enter Instagram competitions in my spare time (well, not so much this year but loads last year). I’ve won loads of stuff. Makeup, home goods, vouchers, food, skin care, clothes, etc. At some points up to 2 competitions wins per week. I barely post on my insta account and definitely am not an influencer.