Competition or rights grab?

It's slightly different in that one can generally use photography multiple times for different applications etc, but say an ad or t-shirt design is often quite specific. Also, we tend to hand over copyright - designing a logo and then charging the client everytime they want to use it on a new 'thing' wouldn't really work. So I don't really see them as a 'rights grab' more of a we want something for nothing!

Most designers are very suspicious of competitions in that (unless they're student ones - which are often respected) as they're often either an attempt to get cheap work or a huge free pitch. Or more likely a combination of both.

I don't think I've ever seen a competition run by a company I'd be prepared to enter. For example - let's guess the family ticket is £60. Perhaps that's worth £40 to the company (They make a profit on the face value and there will be VAT I guess). So in my hypothetical case they want to actually pay £40 for a t shirt design.

So the proposition might be - I'm inviting 20 designers to submit design for a T shirt, I'll choose one and then pay them £40 for the final artwork.

Pretty rubbish deal.

I know of no designers that enter them. I suspect in most casesthe people that enter are non-designers who fancy being able to have something they've 'designed' being seen on other people.