Gamblers are always on the move, and you can currently find millions of them residing in sweepstakes casinos. This new type of casino has been booming since the quarantine days of 2020, quickly turning a niche space into a billion-dollar market. And with big-name sites like Chumba Casino and Luckyland Slots continuing to lead the charge, it’s safe to say the sweepstakes casinos are here to stay.
Sweepstakes Casino Market Currently Valued at $6.9bn, Expected to Hit $12.1 Billion by 2031
- Sweepstakes casinos generated $3.1 billion from player purchases in 2022
- The market will make an estimated $6.9 billion in 2025
- By 2031, the global sweepstakes is estimated to nearly double and generate $12.1 billion
The popularity of sweeps casinos is growing.
When they first exploded onto the scene, nobody expected them to become this huge.
But the past half-decade has been insanely successful for them, with sweepstakes casinos becoming popular among Gen Z and Millennials while, at the same time, gaining serious traction with streamers on Kick and Twitch.
This level of growth has, naturally, scared traditional online casinos. After all, sweepstakes casinos are their new rivals. And when the American Gaming Association called sweepstakes casinos out back in 2024, asking state lawmakers to “consider enacting legislation to prevent unlicensed operators from exploiting loopholes in sweepstakes regulations to offer online real money gambling.”, it was obviously a targeted attack by its member casinos.
Love them or hate them, sweepstakes casinos have stolen millions of players away from traditional online casinos over the past few years. They’ve also enjoyed a serious market advantage, too, operating in a legal grey area that allows them to freely exist in almost every US state without having to pay heavy licensing fees or taxes. This, unsurprisingly, has had the likes of FanDuel and BetMGM shaking their fists in anger.
In a nutshell, sweepstakes casinos don’t have to follow the same laws that regular online casinos do. This is because sweeps casinos use virtual coins instead of real money, meaning that, in the eyes of the law, they’re technically not gambling sites.
It’s projected that sweepstakes casinos will have generated $6.9bn throughout the whole of 2025 by the time the year wraps up. And this revenue figure will practically have doubled in 2031, so, seemingly, there’s no slowing the sweeps casino market down.
How Does Sweepstakes Casinos Work?
If you’ve yet to get swept up (pun intended) by the sweepstakes casino hype, you might be a little unsure as to how they actually work, so we’ll break it down for you.
Sweepstakes casinos are just like regular online casinos. In fact, they’re almost the same. The major difference, though, is that you’re not allowed to bet real money.
Inside any sweepstakes casino, you have a choice of either Gold Coins (GC) or Sweeps Coins (SC). The Gold Coins allow you to play as many games as you like for free, while the Sweeps Coins enable you to win real-life prizes if you collect enough of them.
On top of this, most sweepstakes casino sites also have a positive focus on weekly tournaments, fun leaderboards, and giveaways. It’s very much a gamer-like experience, whereas inside regular online casinos everything is just about money.
Let’s say you play the Gem Huntress slot game inside Chumba Casino. You bet 10 Sweeps Coins, hit a few winning spins, and eventually walk away with 70 Sweeps Coins. You could then take these coins (worth $70) and redeem them for prizes from the Chumba Casino menu, such as cash or gift cards.
That, in a nutshell, is how sweepstakes casinos work. All of the games, mechanics, and rules are the same, but what you’re doing is playing with virtual coins rather than actual money, whether it’s mobile slots, blackjack, or poker.
It’s something that new generation players seem to love a lot, as it removes the pressure of traditional gambling while still allowing you to potentially collect prizes.
Chumba Casino, Stake.us Have Strong Hold on Players
With so many sweepstakes casinos currently available on the internet, two of the biggest names are Chumba Casino and Stake.us.
Chumba Casino is an all-time classic that’s been around since way back in 2012. If you speak to any sweepstakes casino fan, they usually recommend it as the one to sign up with first. The site itself even boasts of having “over 1 million players”, despite only having around 200 games to pick from. It’s very much quality over quantity with Chumba, and it’s benefited the site hugely over the past 13 years.
Then there’s the relatively new Stake.us, which has picked up some serious momentum since launching in 2022. It’s an extremely popular casino with Kick and Twitch streamers, and has also benefited from the likes of Drake and Adin Ross partnering with the site. And with close to 2,000 — yes, 2,000 — available casino games, Stake.us is a big hitter if there ever was one.
When it comes to your typical sweepstakes casinos, if they’re not a member of Chumba Casino, they’ll be signed up with Stake.us. These two sites in particular, as well as LuckyLand Slots, WOW Vegas, and a small number of others, are the driving force behind the non-stop success of the sweepstakes market, so it’ll be extremely interesting to see if they can keep attracting new players over the coming years.
The Move Towards ‘Social Gambling’
What we’ve seen post-2020 is a huge shift in consumer preferences across both gaming and gambling.
In gaming, free-to-play live service games like Valorant, Fortnite, and League of Legends have completely destroyed the traditional video game model that (up until recent times) had always been in place.
And with sweepstakes casinos, they’ve very much done the same thing to online gambling, turning it into a free-play, highly social, and much more interactive space than it was before.
Ultimately, it’s a reflection of what players want, which is why sweepstakes casinos are so popular.
We already know that Gen Z and Millennial players crave social aspects in their games, which is exactly what sweepstakes casinos give them. Not to mention, these casinos are all free-to-play, so it also falls in line with the current F2P game trend that’s dominated gaming for the past decade.
Traditional online casinos are unlikely to be phased out, but they’ll be going head-to-head with sweepstakes casinos over the next decade in an intense market battle to see who can claim the other’s players.
