The sweepstakes casino crackdown: a dated timeline

News timeline, published September 1, 2026, maintained as events land. Sources are primary where available: statutes, bill records, regulator releases, and court filings; press coverage is used, and labeled, where a primary document was not directly retrievable.

Disclosure: this site's publisher, Luck Incorporated LLC, operates Chance Infinite, a free-entry sweepstakes app that competes for some of the same players; we cover the sweepstakes-casino category as its documented critic, and our factual claims here are attributed to the officials and documents that made them. Full disclosure in the footer. This page is not legal advice.

The laws: ten states and counting

State	Law	Signed	Effective	Core of it
Montana	SB 555	May 13, 2025	Oct 1, 2025	Adds online casinos, by whatever name known, that take bets and pay out in any form of currency to the definition of prohibited internet gambling; the text does not use the words sweepstakes or dual-currency
Nevada	SB 256	Jun 5, 2025	Oct 1, 2025	Related law: adds disgorgement to illegal-gaming penalties and raises one wager offense to a gross misdemeanor; the text does not name sweepstakes casinos
Connecticut	PA 25-112	Jun 24, 2025	Oct 1, 2025	Bars conducting or promoting a sweepstakes that facilitates real or simulated online casino gaming or sports wagering without a state license; violators face the penalty for professional gambling
New Jersey	A5447	Aug 15, 2025	Immediately	Outlaws the sweepstakes model of wagering; penalties to $25,000 per violation for continued operation after a cease-and-desist
California	AB 831 (Ch. 623)	Oct 11, 2025	Jan 1, 2026	Makes operating, or knowingly supporting, a dual-currency online sweepstakes game unlawful; misdemeanor, fines to $25,000; the text has no player provision
New York	S5935A (Ch. 605)	Dec 5, 2025	Immediately	Bans dual-currency games mimicking casino, sports, lottery, or bingo; fines $10,000 to $100,000
Indiana	HB 1052	Mar 12, 2026	Jul 1, 2026	Lets the Gaming Commission levy a $100,000 civil penalty on anyone who knowingly runs an online dual-currency sweepstakes game that simulates casino or lottery games
Maine	LD 2007	Apr 6, 2026	Jul 29, 2026	Dual-currency sweeps treated as unlawful gambling; fines $10,000 to $100,000
Oklahoma	SB 1589	Veto overridden May 14, 2026	Nov 1, 2026	Enacted over the governor's veto; dual-currency sweeps pulled into the criminal gambling code
Louisiana	HB 53 + HB 883	May 11 and 15, 2026	Aug 1, 2026	Gambling offenses added to the racketeering law; dual-currency games that simulate gambling now constitute gambling by computer, with fines to $100,000; the governor had vetoed a similar bill in 2025
Iowa	SF 2289	May 15, 2026	Jul 1, 2026	Related law: the regulator gains cease-and-desist and injunction powers over unlicensed games of chance and undefined “illegal sweepstakes”; the text does not name dual-currency or online games
Tennessee	SB 2136 / HB 1885	May 22, 2026	May 22, 2026	Operating or supporting online sweepstakes games made a Consumer Protection Act violation, codifying the AG's December 2025 campaign

Notes: Iowa's and Nevada's laws are listed because they reach the subject, but neither text names sweepstakes casinos, so they are not counted among the ten. Bills also failed or died in Mississippi (2025 and 2026), Maryland (2025 and 2026), Florida, Arkansas (two 2025 bills withdrawn by their authors) and Virginia (2026, where one bill was instead continued to 2027); Minnesota's SF 4474 passed the Senate in 2026 and was not enacted; Massachusetts's H.4431 was sent to a study order in March 2026; Louisiana's 2025 attempt was vetoed before 2026's reversal; and a Washington, D.C. bill was pending as of mid-2026. Each state's bills, laws and enforcement, with the documents behind them, are on its page in our state database.

Correction, October 3, 2026: the Oklahoma row gave May 15, 2026 as the date the veto of SB 1589 was overridden. The bill history and the Senate Journal record both override votes, 34 to 10 in the Senate and 68 to 19 in the House, on May 14, 2026.

Correction, October 3, 2026: checking every state against its own records, we now count ten states with laws that name or cover the model, not twelve, because the Iowa and Nevada texts do not name sweepstakes casinos. We also corrected signing dates, penalties and enforcement details.

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Correction, October 3, 2026: checking every state against its own records for our new state database, we corrected this page. The table now gives Connecticut's signing date as June 24, 2025 and Montana's as May 13, 2025; describes Connecticut's penalty as the penalty for professional gambling, not a Class D felony; gives Maine's and Tennessee's effective dates; drops “players exempt” for California, whose text has no player provision; describes the Indiana, Louisiana and Montana laws in their texts' own terms; and counts ten states with laws that name or cover the model, not twelve, because the Iowa and Nevada texts do not name sweepstakes casinos. The enforcement section now says New York's platforms were ending sales rather than had stopped, cites Louisiana's and Maryland's own documents, drops a named-operator count for Mississippi and a February 2025 start for West Virginia's subpoenas that the record does not support, says the Michigan 2025 releases we opened do not identify sweepstakes recipients, and adds Minnesota. The courts section counts two dismissed Georgia class actions, not three. The bill list adds Arkansas and drops Hawaii, whose bill was about gaming machines, not online play.

The enforcement wave

Before and between the statutes, New York's Attorney General announced cease-and-desist letters to 26 platforms on June 6, 2025 and an $8 million VGW settlement on September 9, 2026; Illinois sent 65 letters; Michigan, Minnesota, Tennessee, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Maryland acted, and West Virginia did, per a press report.

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Regulators moved before and between the statutes. Michigan's Gaming Control Board has run the longest campaign, from 2023 letters to VGW's LuckyLand and Stake.us through repeated waves of orders in 2025 and 2026, per its own releases; those waves target unlicensed gambling sites broadly, and the 2025 releases we opened do not identify any recipient as a sweepstakes brand. Its October 8, 2026 release, on letters to 33 offshore operators, says each was found offering casino-style games, sweepstakes-style games, or sports betting without a state license, without saying which offered which. New York's Attorney General announced cease-and-desist letters to 26 platforms on June 6, 2025, including Chumba, LuckyLand, Global Poker, McLuck, and Fortune Coins, and said all 26 were ending the sale of sweeps coins in the state; on September 9, 2026 it announced an $8 million settlement with VGW, effective August 31, 2026. Illinois followed on February 4 and 5, 2026 with 65 letters issued with the Attorney General; we retrieved the individual letters to Stake.us, Fortune Coins, and LuckyLand Slots from the Gaming Board's own site. Minnesota's Attorney General told 14 online gambling sites, social sweepstakes casinos among them, to stop serving the state on November 5, 2025. Tennessee's Attorney General announced letters to nearly 40 platforms on December 29, 2025, stating the model is an illegal lottery under the state constitution and that recipients disabled or agreed to wind down. Arizona's Department of Gaming issued rolling cease-and-desists through 2025 and into 2026; Louisiana's Gaming Control Board announced more than 40 on June 17, 2025, to offshore wagering platforms and online sweepstakes operators, per its own release, alongside an Attorney General opinion that dual-currency platforms were operating in violation of state law; Mississippi's commission announced cease-and-desist letters in a June 17, 2025 notice that names no recipient but says there are no legal exceptions for so-called sweepstakes casinos; West Virginia's Attorney General issued 47 subpoenas to sweepstakes casino operators, after which more than 20 platforms left the state, per a July 2025 press report, and we found no release from the office; Maryland's agency wrote to VGW in March 2025 asking it to respond by March 27, and its Commission sent notices to cease and desist to Chumba Casino and LuckyLand Slots on November 18, 2025, per the letters it publishes.

The courtroom

In Larsen v. PTT, LLC, the High 5 Games case, a federal jury awarded a class of players roughly $24.9 million in February 2025. Kentucky's and Florida's Attorneys General sued VGW in 2026, claims that remain allegations, while VGW has won dismissal of Georgia class actions.

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The verdict that echoes loudest came from Washington State: in February 2025, a federal jury in Larsen v. PTT, LLC, the High 5 Games case, awarded roughly $24.9 million to a class of players, following a 2024 summary judgment that the apps violated Washington's gambling-loss recovery and consumer-protection laws; trade press describe it as the first jury verdict against an online social casino. The settled record includes VGW's $11.75 million Kentucky class settlement (Armstead, Henderson Circuit Court, approved 2023, with the operator denying wrongdoing) and Yellow Social Interactive's $1.32 million Kentucky settlement (Whiting, same court, final approval hearing December 2023). The pending record grew heavier in 2026: Kentucky's Attorney General sued VGW on June 17, 2026 in Franklin Circuit Court, seeking a shutdown and recovery of player losses, per the complaint as filed; Florida's Attorney General sued Stake.us and VGW brands on August 19, 2026 in Hillsborough County, naming payment processors as defendants, per the Attorney General's release and the complaints as posted, which are allegations; and the City of Baltimore sued major operators in March 2026, also per press coverage of the filings. A federal class action in New Jersey (Bargo v. Apple, Inc. et al., D.N.J., No. 2:24-cv-10805, detailed in our McLuck profile) has named Apple and Google alongside operators since late 2024. Operators have wins too: VGW obtained dismissal of Georgia class actions in December 2024 and July 2025 on jurisdictional and arbitration grounds, which trade press counted as its third win in the state, and several suits against operators have been compelled to arbitration under the class-action waivers in their terms.

The platforms and the industry

Google reclassified sweepstakes casinos out of its social-casino ads category on October 28, 2025, placing them under its online-gambling policy with licensing and certification requirements, per its policy change log as reported. A July 13, 2026 announcement extended that certification regime to all categories under the policy effective September 14, 2026, per Google's policy pages; our explainer covers what the wall closes. We found no verified, announced Apple policy change targeting the category, and we say so rather than repeat the rumor. The industry consolidated its defense: two trade groups launched in 2024 and 2025 and merged in September 2025, the SPGA folding into the Social Gaming Leadership Alliance per the groups' own announcements, arguing the products are lawful promotional sweepstakes; two governors, Louisiana's in 2025 and Oklahoma's in 2026, made overbreadth or redundancy arguments in veto messages, and both states have since enacted laws, Louisiana's by the governor's own later signature (in force since August 1, 2026) and Oklahoma's by override (taking effect November 1, 2026).

What the fight is actually about

The legal question is consideration, the element that separates a lawful sweepstakes from a lottery, as laid out on our definitions page. States argue the sweeps currency is distributed overwhelmingly as a bonus on coin purchases, making the purchase disguised consideration; that is the theory in Kentucky's 2026 complaint and Tennessee's constitutional position. Washington's courts reached player-recovery results by a different route, treating virtual chips as a thing of value under state law. The newest statutes mostly skip the element-by-element debate and define dual-currency casino-style games as prohibited outright. Operators answer that no purchase is necessary, pointing to free daily grants and postal or online entry requests, and that the purchasable currency is entertainment-only; that defense has not yet been tested to a merits verdict in most of these new suits. We do not referee that question. We rank apps where it never arises, because nothing is for sale: that list is here, and the named casino profiles, built from the operators' own documents, are on the casinos page.

A year and a half ago the dual-currency casino operated in all but a handful of states. Today ten states have enacted laws that name or cover the model, two attorneys general have live lawsuits, the category's largest operator by most industry accounts is closing one of its flagship brands, and the exclusion lists in the operators' own terms read like a map of the retreat. Whatever the courts ultimately decide about consideration, the direction of the record is not ambiguous, and this page will keep the dates as they land.