Can You Make Real Money at a Sweepstakes Casino?

Sweepstakes Casino Winnings: What You’ll Learn

• Understanding Sweepstakes Casinos: Learn what sweepstakes casinos are, how they operate, and how they differ from traditional casinos.

• Legal Landscape: Explore the legality of sweepstakes casinos in various regions and the regulations that govern their operation.

• Ways to Win Real Money: Discover how players can win real cash prizes through sweepstakes and promotional offers, including strategies for maximizing returns.

• Tips for Successful Play: Gain insight into effective strategies for playing at sweepstakes casinos, including bankroll management and game selection.

• Common Misconceptions: Debunk myths and common misconceptions about sweepstakes casinos and clarify what players can realistically expect in terms of winnings.

If you haven’t heard of a sweepstake casino, you’re not the only one. This is a special gaming platform that operates casino games for entertainment purposes. But they do so alongside a parallel set of games where players can risk and win cash and prizes. If you’re a little confused about how that’s legal in your state, take comfort in knowing that gambling regulators are just as confused.

The bottom line is sweepstakes casinos offer your slot-type games, table games like Blackjack and Roulette, live dealer table games, and a whole array of gimmicks and contests designed to keep you entertained. And you can do so with real cash and prizes on the line.

As with any casino-style game, the house has a mathematical advantage, so any wins you get from playing will be short-term only. In the long run the house always wins. That’s true in a cash casino as it is in a sweeps casino.

However, sweepstakes casinos aggressively ply gamblers with a generous system of bonuses and prizes that astute players can make a profit from. We’ll discuss how you can make real money at a sweeps casino in depth in this article. But first we better discuss some legal realities. 

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Are Sweepstakes Casinos Legal?

It’s closer to say that sweeps casinos aren’t illegal by the letter of the law. Most states’ gambling strictures have legal carve-outs for giveaways, drawings, and sweepstakes-style contests.

Sweepstakes casinos claim to operate in this way, using a dual currency system of Gold Coins (which you use to play for fun) and Sweeps Coins (which can be redeemed for cash and prizes, but can’t be purchased directly). In this article we’re going to talk about accumulating and redeeming sweeps coins.

But first a bit of bad news. Where sweeps casinos were once available to residents in every state, the situation is changing. Unfortunately if you live in Washington, Connecticut, Idaho, Nevada, New York Michigan, or Montana you’ll find it nearly impossible to find a sweeps casino that allows you to play.

In addition, many sweeps casinos have ceased operating in Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia. Their status is less clear in this latter group of states, but apparently the casinos aren’t taking any chances. Other states are likely to follow suit, so have fun while you still can!

Winning Cash and Prizes

Sweeps casinos work using a dual currency system. The basic currency is called Gold Coins. Use these coins to play casino-style games strictly for fun. You’ll gamble them and win them in piles, and sweeps casinos will practically beg you to buy them. But at the end of the day, Gold Coins are not transferable and have no monetary value. But that’s not the case with Sweeps Coins.

Sweeps Coins are the premium currency of most sweeps casinos. Some sites have different names for them but the function is the same. Sweeps Coins often have an explicit cash value (1SC to $1 is most common). When you’re ready to play for Sweeps Coins, you’ll be playing on a segregated set of games where Gold Coins are no longer accepted.

To maintain the illusion that this operation is a giveaway, you can’t buy Sweeps Coins directly from the casino, nor can you trade your Gold Coins in for Sweeps Coins. So you might be wondering: if it’s possible to trade Sweeps Coins in for cash and prizes, how do you get them in the first place?

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How to Get Sweeps Coins

The most straightforward way to acquire Sweeps Coins is also usually the most disadvantageous for the player: buying Gold Coins. Sweepstakes casinos main source of revenue is customers purchases of Gold Coins, the play currency. When you buy Gold Coins, they’ll throw in a ‘bonus’ reward of Sweeps Coins as well.

NOTE: If you buy Gold Coins in order to get ahold of Sweeps Coins, most players advise you to wait for an offer where the number of bonus Sweeps Coins exceeds the dollars you’ll have to spend.

For example, an offer to buy 5000 GC for $10, with a 15 SC bonus is a good one because 15 > $10.  Of course, nothing comes for free, and the higher the value of the bonus Sweeps Coins, the more likely it is you’ll have to deal with restrictions, which we’ll cover later.

Take Advantage of No Deposit Bonuses

Start getting freebie SC when you register. Sweepstakes casinos have promotional offers where you receive free Sweeps Coins just for signing up, regardless of whether you make a coin purchase or not. These are known as No Deposit Bonuses, so named because in traditional cash casinos you’re not getting free-rolls without making a deposit of some kind.

To get a No Deposit Bonus, just complete all the registration requirements, which may include providing proof of identity and residence. From there you’ll either get Sweeps Coins added to your account automatically, or the coins will show up in the ‘Available Bonuses’ page after you log in.

How much money are we talking about? It can vary widely, but a representative example is the popular sweepstakes casino Pulsz. Sign up there and you’ll get 5 free Sweeps Coins upon registration, usable for slots, table games, or other offerings, and you won’t have to spend a dime. It might not sound like much, but sweeps casinos usually host games where you can play with fractions of a Sweeps Coin, so you’ll be able to sample a variety of the casino’s goods.

No Deposit Bonuses at sweepstakes casinos are a low-risk way to seed your bankroll before committing any money, and savvy online gamblers always keep an eye out for the best offers. Just be ready to face restrictions like being limited to certain games, and having a brief window to use your SC.

NOTE: Sweepstakes casinos go to great lengths to establish your identity. If you have designs on signing up over and over at the same casino to get multiple rewards, I assure you they’ve thought of this and won’t let you do it. Not to mention, you’re putting your account at risk. Sweeps casinos have a reputation for voiding redemptions if there is any sign of funny business.

Take Advantage of Free Activity Bonuses

Sweeps casinos are just happy to see you coming back again and again. Nearly every casino out there gives players a small reward for simply logging in once every 24 hours.

Don’t get too excited, as the amount is usually quite modest, averaging less than 1 SC per day. But hey, free is free! Some casinos give you a spin on a wheel that can result in a bigger daily prize.

You will even occasionally see variations on this bonus theme where the prize grows as your login streak grows. Use your bonus Sweeps Coins to play eligible games in an attempt to grow your SC balance. Or save them up and redeem them for cash (once you’ve met the playthrough requirements, and have enough to redeem).

If you’re disciplined and don’t get sucked into disadvantageous games, you can actually take home some cold hard cash through these daily login bonuses. While the individual bonus at any given casino is small, remember there are scores of sweepstakes casinos operating across the United States.

With a little patience and determination, you can even turn this into a side hustle; join every sweeps casino with a daily reward, set a reminder to log into each one every day and claim your reward. At the end of the month, or as soon as you’ve met the minimum requirements, redeem your Sweeps Coins for cash and prizes. 

NOTE: Some casinos award your login bonus automatically after you log in; with others you have to take some action on the site. For example at LuckyBird, you’ll have to click the ‘Bonus’ button in the main menu. And a few casinos suspend or restrict your daily bonus if you go too long without making a purchase. As always, make sure you read the bonus rules.

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Refer Friends

Got a gambling buddy who might be interested in joining your preferred sweepstakes casino? If so, make sure you take full advantage of the referral bonus that’s available on just about every casino under the sun, sweeps or otherwise.

Some casinos will bonus you just for making the introduction to your friend, while others won’t bonus you unless your buddy makes a purchase of some kind.

But having friends who like to gamble is one of the best ways to grow your Sweeps Coin balance. Just make sure your friend is a real person, not your imaginary friend or your pet Airedale.

Other Special Events

Some sweepstakes casinos feature leaderboard challenges, special free-spin jackpots, and VIP tiers to reward active players. These occasionally lead to surprise bonuses of Sweeps Coins for participants, or an increased rate of earning SC through the standard bonuses.

As casinos fight for your attention, you’ll also find it sometimes pays to monitor your casino’s social media accounts for giveaways or special opportunities to obtain more Sweeps Coins

NOTE: One final method of obtaining Sweeps Coins is the old-fashioned way. To comply with gambling regulations, or rather to make certain that their sites don’t get deemed by regulators as true gambling outfits, sweepstakes casinos must adhere to the ‘no purchase required’ definition of a giveaway or a sweepstakes.

Look through the casinos terms and conditions and you will inevitably find a set of instructions for requesting free Sweeps Coins by mail, and they are obligated to provide them for you. (Fun fact: this rule applies to any sweepstakes you’ve ever entered, or any retailer’s drawing contest where you’ve collected game pieces, such as the famous McDonalds Monopoly game. You can always request free entries for the price of a stamp!)

Those Pesky Playthrough Requirements

This is an important enough restriction, we need to discuss it first. If you’re offered free chips as a bonus or promotion in any form of casino, they’ll come with a few strings attached.

Above all you’re expected to gamble with those chips before you can exchange them for something of real monetary value, and often more than once. This is known as the playthrough requirement, often quantified as 5x or 10x. That’s the number of times you must put your Sweeps Coins at risk on casino games before they become yours for good.

With hundreds of sweeps casinos out there, you’ll see a variety of playthrough requirements for Sweeps Coin redemption, but it’s almost always at least 1x and sometimes as high as 10x.

Playing the Right Games

If you gamble online for any length of time, particularly if you play slot-type games, you’ll become intimately familiar with the term RTP, which stands for Return to Player. Over the long run, this number represents the percentage of wagers that get paid back to the player. So a game with a 96% RTP means for every $1 you wager, the casino keeps 4 cents and gives you back 96 cents.

RTP is not a prediction of how your gambling session will go. The game’s code ensures the RTP holds true over long stretches of time. You could sail past the RTP and be a big winner, or you could lose your entire stake quickly, but on average your returns will approximate the published RTP.

What makes RTP is an important concept is that you must put your bonus Sweeps Coins at risk in the casino’s games before they’re yours to redeem.  That’s known as the playthrough requirement.

Having to meet a playthrough requirement means there’s always a chance that bonus you worked so hard to attain could disappear during an unlucky streak as you’re trying to complete your playthrough. To lower the chances of a total loss, always play games with the highest RTP.

Math Break: Imagine you have $20 and you must meet a 3x playthrough requirement before you can cash out. The only game is a simple coinflip where you wager $1 at a time. But there are two variations: an 85% RTP version and a 95% RTP version.  The chances that you’d lose all $20 (prior to completing the playthrough) is nearly five times higher on the 85% RTP game compared to the 95% RTP game.  

NOTE: In most regulated real-money casinos, publishing accurate RTP information is a requirement enforced by gaming authorities. However, sweepstakes casinos operate under a different set of promotional contest rules and are generally not legally required to display RTPs or to have them independently verified. Many sweeps casinos do it anyway because they know gamblers expect to see them.

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Cashing Out

Now that you’ve got your plan to collect bonus Sweeps Coins at your favorite casinos, let’s talk  about redeeming your balance for cash and/or prizes. Here’s what you need to know:

• There’s usually a minimum redemption amount. The casino will deny your attempts if you don’t meet this requirement, which is rarely less than 50 Sweeps Coins and sometimes as much as 100.

• You’ll need to go through their verification process before you’ll be allowed to redeem Sweeps Coins. That can mean anything from submitting information to a third party service provider to taking a selfie and sending it in with pictures of your driver’s license. It’s designed to ensure gamblers are in states that allow sweepstakes casinos and so people don’t try to create multiple accounts on one site.

• Make sure the redemption is in a form that works for you. Many sweeps casinos require you to have a CashApp account or a crypto wallet. Others distribute e-gift cards from well-known retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon. And a few will deposit directly to a credit or debit card. Either way, if you’re verified, and the redemption amount isn’t too large, it shouldn’t take more than a 24 hours to get your redemption.

Mind Your Ts and Cs

In the world of bonus Sweeps Coins, you’ll always be subject to a dizzying array of rules. And less than scrupulous casino operators will be happy to keep you in the dark about certain restrictions:

• Sweeps Coins earned from bonuses expire, usually after 60 days from your last redemption; make sure you don’t let your balance grow to big before cashing out.

• Some casinos will cap big wins if the original bet that led to that win was made using a Sweeps Coin acquired via a bonus. This is a frequent source of disappointment and frustration with sweeps casino players.

• Sweeps casinos are operating in a legal gray area, so they aren’t subject to normal regulations and industry standards. They’ve been known to reduce your balance or redemption amount, and even block your account, on the slightest suspicion that you’re breaking the rules.

Time to Win

Sweepstakes casinos host casino games with built-in house advantages. Like any casino game, you might get lucky in the short term, but the house always wins in the long run. So don’t plan on earning a living from gambling at a sweepstakes casino.

Having said that, the bonus systems in place at sweepstakes casinos are often extremely generous and offer a chance to make real money. They reward players just for signing up, and engaging with the site.

If you pay attention you might even find special engagement bonuses on the casinos’ social media sites (like Facebook and Instagram). Just make sure you always read the rules at your preferred casinos before you start counting your winnings. Good luck and let us know what your experience is at sweepstakes casinos!

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