Folks, it is time for yet another Starbucks promotional game. From now through December 31st, customers have a chance to win Starbucks for life via the game called, uh, Starbucks For Life. And, like other Starbucks promotions in this vein (such as the Summer Game or Bingo), you don’t actually have to make a purchase to participate. Instead, you can submit for free daily plays.
You know how many radio ads end with the disclaimer “no purchase necessary?” Well, that’s exactly why you can play the Starbucks For Life game without buying anything or completing any of the missions the promotion lays out. Instead, you can simply click the “enter without making a purchase” link near the bottom of the game page once you’re logged in. To save you time, you can also just go here.
While submitting for a play is free, it does take a small amount of (mostly just annoying) work. First, you’ll need to provide your name, email address, and phone number. Should you try to make any of these fake, you’ll at least want to use a real, working email as this is how your free play(s) will be delivered to you.
If you’ll recall, for this year’s Summer Game, Starbucks did make it to where users needed to watch a 30-second ad before submitting for their free play. Furthermore, this ad couldn’t be skipped — and, if you navigated away from the tab, it would know and pause the video for you. Because of this experience, when I first saw that there was a video running 2 minutes and 18 seconds on this year’s form, I thought it was going to be a huge pain in the butt to submit every day. Thankfully, at least for now, you are able to scrub through the video and even advance the playhead right to the end. So, while you’ll need to at least hit play before submitting, you can easily skip ahead. That said, there are some quiz questions about the video you’ll need to answer (although they seemingly don’t need to be correct).
As for what’s on the line, you can win Starbucks gift cards, a $1,000 Delta gift card, a Stanley tumbler, bonus stars, the titular Starbucks for Life, and more if you collect the right stamps. Alternatively, you may receive a sweepstakes entry instead — or, my favorite option, there’s a chance you’ll score an instant prize. More often than not, you’ll probably get a stamp that will (hopefully) put you closer to winning a prize… but, realistically, you should probably just hope to get a few bonus stars and maybe a few dollars in gift cards from playing.
Personally, Starbucks for Life isn’t one of my favorite Starbucks games of the year — but there’s still a chance for free Stars and more. So far, in the three days since this year’s event started, I have managed to win 5 Stars. That’s really not much, but could add up if I maintain a similar win ratio going forward. Plus, seeing as I did manage to score a $25 gift card during the Summer Game this year, my interest in taking advantage of all the free plays I can has increased. So, if you’re a Starbucks fan of any level, consider keeping the link open in a tab and making your daily free play submissions through the end of the year.