Louisiana killed the last sweeps sites this august so whats even left for US players now??

[wagerwinner]

ok so not my usual area but my cousin lives in LA and hes been on at me about this since the weekend. he plays a couple of the sweeps casinos, the smaller ones, and as of aug 1st they've all gone dark on him. logs in, geofenced, redemption window closed on the one he had a balance on.
turns out LA made it a full on RACKETEERING offence now. up to 50 years apparently. for running a sweeps site. thats not a typo, fifty years.
i know its US specific and most of us here are UK but the scale of whats happening over there is mad and i wanted to understand it. is this the end of sweeps in the states basically? which sites are even left?

 

[Timmy]

bro sweeps casino has been dying ALL year its not just louisiana. indiana and maine went dark in july, tennessee earlier, oklahoma is coming in november. its like a state a month at this point
big ones already left la way back in 2025 tho. stake.us, chumba, all of them pulled out when the cease and desist letters went out. aug is really just killing the tiny holdout brands that stuck around..

 

[wagerwinner]

bro sweeps casino has been dying ALL year its not just louisiana. indiana and maine went dark in july, tennessee earlier, oklahoma is coming in november. its like a state a month at this point
big ones already left la way back in 2025 tho. stake.us, chumba, all of them pulled out when the cease and desist letters went out. aug is really just killing the tiny holdout brands that stuck around..

ah right so the big names were already gone. so what did my cousin lose access to then?!!

 

[Timmy]

ah right so the big names were already gone. so what did my cousin lose access to then?!!

I guess sketchy little ones that kept operating after everyone reputable bailed. those are the ones that held on til the actual law reached aug. and now they''re facing racketeering charges so they're gone too. tell ur cousin he's lucky he got out with most of his balance ngl, the holdout brands are exactly the ones most likely to just vanish with your money

 

[HughRoller]

this whole thing has been a slow motion car crash and im watching it happen to my own accounts. im not in louisiana but ive lost access to sweeps in like four states this year through moving around for work. the pattern is always the same. no warning that really lands, a redemption window buried in an email you didn't read, then one day you log in and you're geofenced with whatever balance you didn't cash out just GONE.
VGW pulled chumba, luckyland, global poker out of entire states in one move in july. thats millions of players losing their platform overnight. and there 's no recourse because technically its all "promotional sweepstakes" not gambling so you were never really a customer with rights in the first place.

 

[vogafox]

legal mechanism here is worth understanding because it's the whole story. sweepstakes casinos operated in a grey zone by using a dual-currency model. you buy "gold coins" for entertainment, you get "sweeps coins" free that are redeemable for cash. the argument was that the purchasable currency isn't what wins you money, so it's technically not gambling, it's a sweepstakes promotion like a mcdonalds monopoly game.

states spent 2025 and 2026 closing that logic down one by one. louisiana's HB883 just explicitly defined the dual-currency model as "gambling by computer" so the grey zone doesn't exist there anymore. once a state defines it that way the legal cover evaporates and operators leave rather than face prosecution.

 

[bill_collins]

I can agree with @vogafox. To add the specific Louisiana detail, because it's genuinely unusual: Louisiana passed two bills together. HB883 defines the dual-currency model as gambling by computer. HB53 is the one that matters for the fifty year figure - it expands the state's racketeering statute to cover gambling violations. So operating a sweeps casino in Louisiana isn't just illegal, it's a RICO-level offence carrying penalties up to 50 years hard labour and fines over a million dollars.
That's not aimed at players. It's aimed at operators, and it's deliberately severe to make holdout brands leave rather than risk it. Which is exactly what happened on August 1st. The penalty structure is the enforcement.

 

[wagerwinner]

I can agree with @vogafox. To add the specific Louisiana detail, because it's genuinely unusual: Louisiana passed two bills together. HB883 defines the dual-currency model as gambling by computer. HB53 is the one that matters for the fifty year figure - it expands the state's racketeering statute to cover gambling violations. So operating a sweeps casino in Louisiana isn't just illegal, it's a RICO-level offence carrying penalties up to 50 years hard labour and fines over a million dollars.
That's not aimed at players. It's aimed at operators, and it's deliberately severe to make holdout brands leave rather than risk it. Which is exactly what happened on August 1st. The penalty structure is the enforcement.

50y hard labour for running a casino app is genuinely insane to me as a brit. we fine operators here, we dont threaten to put them in prison for half a century. is that normal in the states?

 

[CatMatt]

@wagerwinner Louisiana's a specific case. They have one of the harshest prison systems in the country, Angola penitentiary and all that, and they tend to reach for severe criminal penalties where other states would use civil fines. Texas would probably just fine you into oblivion. Louisiana codes it as racketeering and threatens hard labour. Same goal, very different cultural approach to enforcement.
The thing people outside the US miss is there's no federal framework for any of this. Every state does its own thing. That's why you get this patchwork where sweeps are legal in one state, a civil violation in the next, and a racketeering felony across the border. Fifty states, fifty rulebooks.