Sweepstakes gambling sites offering real money slots, casino games, and poker are legal in Colorado. These sites give you the opportunity to gamble socially and to win real cash. They use an innovative dual currency system — using laws designed for sweepstakes contests to stay legal in Colorado and nationwide.
You’ll see more detail on how the popular sweepstakes gambling sites stay legal below. This includes a look at the two different currencies — “Gold Coins” and “Sweeps Coins” — and the relationship between them.
After that, four of the biggest and best sweepstakes gambling sites are covered. These are Chumba Casino, Luckyland Slots, and Global Poker. The pros and cons of sweepstakes gambling, along with other practical information, can be found at the end of this page.
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Are sweepstakes casinos legal in the United States?
Yes. Everyone can register for a sweepstakes casino account and play no-cost games for a chance to win cash prizes if you’re 18 or older and live in the United States. The only exception is Washington state, where sweepstakes games for profit are prohibited.
Sweepstakes laws are set by individual states. In addition, some sites, such as Global Poker, LuckyLand and Chumba Casino, are also licensed and regulated by the prestigious Malta Gaming Authority.
Online casino sites use a random number generator to determine the outcome of spins. VGW’s RNG has been guaranteed to be authentically random, ensuring fairness, by an independent certification laboratory.
How do sweepstakes casinos work?
As mentioned above, sweepstakes casinos sell play money (Gold Coins) to make money themselves, and they give away sweepstakes entries (Sweeps Coins) for free, primarily with purchases of the play money. When you use the sweepstake currency to play a game, you can redeem any winnings for cash prizes.
The key part of sweepstakes law is the requirement that you don’t need to purchase anything in order to play no-cost games for a chance at cash prizes. And you don’t. Sweepstakes online casinos give away sweepstakes entries a number of ways, in addition to complementary amounts that come with purchases of the play currency.
The law says that when sweepstakes entries are used in a game of chance — which could be a lotto-style drawing, a virtual Monopoly game or a casino slots game, among others — winning entries can legally receive prizes, including real money.
Although you can’t win prizes with play money spins, sweepstakes casino games are a lot of fun to play, and you won’t have any trouble finding a way to use any play money that you win. You can even test out new games with your winnings to help you decide if you’d like to play with sweepstakes entries, instead.
To stay within sweepstakes law, sometimes casinos use what seems like a different language. For instance, you can’t say that one Sweeps Coin is equivalent to one U.S. dollar, because Sweeps Coins have no monetary worth.
On that same track, you also can’t say you win cash prizes playing sweepstakes games, because you win Sweeps Coins, not real cash. You can redeem the Sweeps Coins you win playing games for cash prizes, but that isn’t the same thing as cashing out or making a withdrawal from your account.
Along that line, while you can’t deposit money into an account on a sweepstakes casino like you would at a real money online casino, you can buy play currency that comes bundled with sweepstakes currency. Once you get used to the system, you’ll find that sweepstakes casinos are really no different from traditional sites in regulated online gambling markets.
Compare bonuses at top sweepstakes sites
| Online Casino | Join Bonus | Welcome Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Chumba | 2,000,000 GC plus 2 FREE SC | 10,000,000 GC package for $10 |
| LuckyLand Slots | 7,777 GC plus 10 FREE SC | 50,000 GC package |
| Global Poker | NA | Up to 200,000 GC |
Which are the best online sweepstakes casino sites?
While there are a number of online sweeps casinos available and others currently in development, certainly one of the most experienced operators is Virtual Gaming Worlds.
The Australian-based company launched Chumba Casino in 2012, Global Poker in 2016 and LuckyLand Slots in 2019. There’s also FendOff Sports, a sports prediction site, operating in partnership with virtual sport provider Inspired Entertainment, which launched in 2020.
This review will take a closer look at Chumba, LuckyLand and Global Poker, along with Woopla Inc.’s sweepstakes casino Funzpoints, which launched in 2018.
Funzpoints follows sweepstakes law just like the other sites, but while all VGW sites operate very similarly, there are a number of key differences between Funzpoints and the VGW-operated sites.
Funzpoints uses two kinds of virtual money, as well, although the equivalent of Gold Coins are called Standard Funzpoints, and the sweepstakes entries (equivalent to Sweeps Coins) are Premium Funzpoints.
While no app is available for these sites, they are all built on completely web-based platforms that you can access from any updated browser on a Mac or PC, along with mobile browsers for Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.
Keep on reading to learn more about these top-rated sweepstakes casinos, including details about their welcome offers and the types of games you can expect to find.
Chumba Casino
VGW formed in 2010, and Chumba Casino launched in 2012 as its first venture. Chumba took some time to get off the ground, but joining up with Facebook in 2017 gave the site a boost.
Now, with more than a million gamers signed up with the site, many players have reaped over 1 million Sweeps Coins in winnings, redeemable for cash prizes. One player’s lucky spin on a progressive jackpot slot won over 1.8 million Sweeps Coins in 2020.
Originally offering only proprietary games, in 2020, Chumba began offering titles from third-party game studios, such as Reel Play, Golden Rock Studios and Big Time Gaming-licensed Megaways titles.
Chumba is the only sweepstakes casino in this review to offer table games. The site offers two versions of blackjack: Back Blackjack, developed in house, and another variant simply titled blackjack that’s licensed from Golden Rock.
Just for signing up, you’ll get a welcome bonus package of 2,000,000Gold Coins with 2 free Sweeps Coins. That will give you a chance to check out Chumba’s nearly 100 casino slots and table games for free. When you’re ready to seriously spin for wins, your first Gold Coins purchase will net you 10,000,000 Gold Coins with 30 Sweeps Coins for free.
LuckyLand Slots
VGW gained access to a large collection of casino slots in 2019 after purchasing the California-based game studio Open Wager. Instead of adding them all to Chumba’s library, VGW incorporated Open Wager’s visually opulent graphics in a brand new site. LuckyLand Slots launched later that same year.
New games are developed in house on a regular basis, with LuckyLand’s exclusive game collection currently consisting of about 40 games. Both the platform and the slots are data intensive, but well worth the bandwidth if your operating system can handle it.
While Chumba’s games offer plenty of modern advances when it comes to the base and bonus games, LuckyLand’s slots are top of the line, with many featuring 3D animations, expanding reels and walking wilds, among other exciting features.
Although the same sweepstakes system is in use on LuckyLand, there are a number of differences between the two sites, primarily with available promotions. LuckyLand extensively promotes its Facebook connection, allowing you to gift up to 50 free spins a day to your online friends, as well as accepting them in return.
Another difference to highlight is LuckyLand’s daily tournaments. A number of games will host leaderboard tournaments for both Gold Coin and Sweeps Coin play every day. To enter a tournament, you just need to start spinning.
At the end of the day, the top 40 players on the leaderboard receive a share of the prize pool. The tournament prize pool is seeded by LuckyLand, but it will grow progressively throughout the day as more players join in.
LuckyLand also offers a VIP loyalty program that features increasingly larger discounts on purchases of Gold Coins for each tier you reach.
New players will qualify for a welcome bonus of 7,777 Gold Coins and 10 free Sweeps Coins to give the games a spin absolutely free. Note that any Sweeps Coin winnings are yours to do with as you like. You can use them to play more games in Sweeps Coin mode, or you can redeem your winnings for a cash prize.
LuckyLand Slots’ second welcome bonus will qualify you for a Gold Coin package of 50,000 Gold Coins and 10 free Sweeps Coins.
How do I join a sweepstakes casino?
Signing up with a sweepstakes casino is as easy as logging in to your Facebook account. As long as you’re 18 or older and a resident of the U.S. or Canada, with the exception of Washington state and Quebec, you are welcome to join any of these legal sweepstakes casinos.
How can I get free Sweeps Coins?
In addition to free Sweeps Coins in Gold Coins packages, VGW sites give away free Sweeps Coins just for logging in to your account once a day, as well as hosting giveaway contests on social media.
You may find discounts on Standard play money purchases bundled with free Premium virtual currency on Funzpoints’ Facebook page.
Another way to get free Sweeps Coins or Premium Funzpoints is to request them in a letter to each respective company. Note that requests must be in a certain format, so you’ll want to review the site’s terms and conditions before investing in a stamp.
What games can you play at sweepstakes casinos?
While table games are available only on Chumba, all of these sweepstakes casinos offer top quality slots games, including modern features such as cascading reels, 100K-plus paylines, and state-of-the-art bonus features with a number of innovative twists.
Chumba and LuckyLand offer progressive jackpot slots, as well, featuring highly lucrative payoffs. You’ll find games with every imaginable type of theme, including pop culture, mystical realms, Old West cowboys and much more.
Each one of these sweepstakes casinos is well worth checking out just for the games. If you live in a state without a real money online casino industry, there’s no reason to wait a minute longer!
Sweepstakes online poker sites
VGW launched its second site, Global Poker, in 2016 after licensing a poker client from Cubeia Sweden AB.
The site is popular with aspiring as well as experienced poker players. You’ll find anywhere from around 5,000 to more than 10,000 players seated at Global Poker’s Texas Hold’em or Omaha tables at any particular time, seven days a week, around the clock.
New players will qualify for a free Gold Coin package, which includes up to 200,000 Gold Coins and 40 free Sweeps Coins.