Official rules

These are the official rules of The Boston Season, a skill based contest run by Chatter Social Inc. Entering means you agree to them, to the Terms of Service and to the Community Guidelines. Last updated 23 September 2026.

1. Who runs it

Chatter Social Inc. ("Chatter") runs and pays for The Boston Season. Chatter is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any university, college, or student organisation, and no university names or marks are used as endorsements. Campus names appear only to say where a team's students study.

2. No purchase necessary

Entry is free and always will be. You do not need to buy anything to enter, to score, or to win.

Nothing you buy inside Chatter earns a single point. Fuel, rockets, Chatter Pro and every other purchase are worth zero on the board. Points come only from people in your rooms, people you bring who stay, shows you run and clips you post. If we ever find a way for money to buy a point, we remove it, not the team.

3. Who can enter

• Teams are students enrolled at a college or university in the Boston area for the 2026 to 2027 academic year.
• Every player needs a Chatter account in good standing and must be at least 13, the minimum age in our Terms. Players under 18 should take part with a parent or guardian's permission.
• The captain must be 18 or older, because the captain signs for the team and receives any prize.
• A team is at least ten people. There is no upper limit.
• One team per person, and one team per club, chapter or house. If two people enter the same org, we contact both and keep the first.
• Employees and contractors of Chatter, and the people who live with them, can play but cannot win a prize.
• Chatter Partners are paid under their own agreement and cannot also be a paid captain of a winning team. They can play, host and appear on the Creator board.

4. How to enter, and when

Enter at chattersocial.io/boston/enter. Entry is free. One form, no card, nothing to install to enter.

• Entries are open now. A team plays through its own Chatter group, and that group's link is its team link from the moment the team enters. Teams without a group are set up with one within one business day. Divisions are confirmed on Friday 2 October to everyone entered by then, and within one business day after that.
• The Comm Ave Cup, 19 to 29 October. Entries close Friday 16 October at 11:59pm Eastern.
• The Boston Cup, 9 to 22 November. Entries close Friday 6 November at 11:59pm Eastern.
• Finals Season, 30 November to 13 December. Entries close Wednesday 25 November at 11:59pm Eastern.

Your division is set by the roster we count at the moment entries close for that cup, not by the number you wrote on the form: Squads 10 to 29, Crews 30 to 79, Houses 80 and up. A team that grows past its division during a cup keeps the division it started in for that cup.

5. How points work

The board is live in the app all season. Points are earned for:

• People in your team's rooms, counted per person per night, not per minute.
• New students who join Chatter through your team's group link and then turn up to a room. A sign up on its own is worth nothing.
• Holding a room on the night's format, for its full length, with a real audience in it.
• Clips posted from your rooms with the season tag.
• Streaks for turning up on consecutive nights.

Cup Hour is nine to ten Eastern, every night of a cup. Everything earned in that hour counts double. The exact point values for each cup are published in the season group before that cup opens and do not change once it has started.

6. Prizes

• Cup champion: $2,500 to the winning team of each cup. If a sponsor signs for that cup, the prize goes up and the new figure is published before the cup opens. It never goes down.
• Division titles for the best Squad, the best Crew and the best House in each cup.
• Best Event, Best Turnout, Top Recruiter and Clip of the Cup, judged as set out below.
• Partners may add prizes in kind, such as tickets, gear or food. Anything added is announced with its value before the cup it belongs to opens, on this page.

Prizes are paid to the captain by bank transfer within thirty days of a cup ending, once a W-9 is returned. The captain decides how the team splits it and is responsible for any tax on it. Prizes are not transferable and there is no cash alternative for anything given in kind.

7. How the judged awards are decided

Points decide the champion and the division titles, and the board is the record. Best Event and Clip of the Cup are judged by a panel at Chatter on how good the night or the clip actually was: how many people turned up, how long they stayed, how much the room reacted, and how well it was put together. Top Recruiter and Best Turnout come straight off the numbers. Panel decisions are final. If two teams tie on points, the one that brought more students who were still active in the last week of the cup wins.

8. Fair play

This part is simple: bring real people.

• No fake, duplicate or bought accounts, and no referrals from your own devices or accounts.
• No bots, scripts, emulators or anything that holds a room open without people in it.
• No paying people to appear on a count, and no trading joins with another team.
• Rooms follow the Community Guidelines. Harassment, hate, sexual content involving minors and threats end a team's season, not just a night.

Chatter can remove points, void a night, disqualify a team or withhold a prize where we believe any of this has happened, and we can do it after a cup has ended if it comes to light later. Accounts suspended or banned score nothing while they are suspended or banned. We tell the captain what happened and they can reply to us about it.

9. Your information

What you type on the entry form (team, campus, name, email, phone if you give it, and anything you write) is used to run the season: to send you your link and code, to place you on the board, to reach you on cup nights and to pay a prize. We do not sell it. It is handled under our Privacy Policy, and you can ask us to delete it at any time by writing to support@chattersocial.io. Asking us to delete it before a cup ends withdraws the team from that cup.

10. Clips, names and photos

Team names appear on the public board and in what we post about the season. Rooms and clips are handled as set out in the Terms of Service. We may show clips posted publicly with the season tag in our own posts about the season. If you would rather we did not use something in particular, tell us and we will take it down.

11. Changes, and if something goes wrong

If a technical fault, a safety problem or anything outside our control makes a cup unworkable, we can pause it, extend it, or judge it on the board as it stood at the last clean point, and we will say which. We can update these rules; the date at the top changes when we do, and anything material is announced in the season group and by email to captains before it takes effect. We cannot change scoring in the middle of a cup.

12. The legal bit

The Boston Season is void where prohibited. It is governed by Delaware law and the dispute terms in our Terms of Service. Chatter's total liability for anything to do with the season is the value of the prize at stake. This is a contest of skill: no element of it is decided by chance, and no payment or purchase improves anyone's position.

Questions

Write to support@chattersocial.io and a person answers. Chatter Social Inc.