Montana officially enacts nation’s first sweepstakes ban
It’s official: Montana is the first U.S. state to explicitly ban online sweepstakes casinos.
Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the legislation into law this week after SB 555 passed both chambers of the legislature in April. The ban will go into effect on Oct. 1 of this year.
The legislation amends the state’s existing gaming laws to stipulate that the term internet gambling now includes “online casinos, by whatever name known, which constitute internet gambling and therefore are prohibited.”
“This includes but is not limited to any platform, website, or application that knowingly transmits or receives gambling information, allows consumers to place a bet or wager using any form of currency, and makes payouts of any form of currency,”the text reads.
The “any form of currency” terminology is key, as it encompasses the dual-currency system used by most sweepstakes operators. Via that approach, users are given a free daily allowance of virtual coins but can buy more of that in-game currency to use. When they buy those coins, they also get an allotment of a second currency that can be used to play games and earn more of that second currency that can be cashed out for real money.
Anyone who knowingly violates the new law will be charged with a felony and could be imprisoned for up to 10 years.
It is not entirely clear from the bill exactly which operators will be impacted by the legislation, which many argue extend beyond the most popular sweepstakes companies.
SPGA slam Montana’s decision
Several operators, including VGW, the company behind Chumba Casino and Luckyland Casino, already decided to pull out of Montana before the bill passed. VGW is a founding member of the new Social Gaming Leadership Alliance (SGLA), the second coalition of social gaming and sweepstakes operators to have emerged in recent times.
The first, the Social and Promotional Games Association (SPGA) provided a statement to SBC Americas on Friday, criticizing the Montana legislation as “vague and sweeping.” Whether that pun was intended was not clear.
The group noted how free-to-play promotions from retailers and other businesses could fall under Montana’s new legal definition of sweeps.
“Even platforms with no purchase required and robust consumer safeguards could now face criminal penalties,” the SPGA warned.
“Montana just criminalized everyday digital promotions with a law so broadly written it fails to name what it bans. It’s a dangerous precedent that could undermine consumer trust, business innovation, and long-standing legal marketing practices.”
To the SPGA’s point, states have differed significantly in how they have (or have not) defined sweepstakes in legislation.
While a newly approved Nevada bill may or may not include sweeps under its broad definition of illegal gaming, an Ohio bill filed this week includes one of the clearest references to sweepstakes seen in any legislation in 2025. That bill references them by name 50 times in the text, explicitly defining what would be outlawed.
Montana reaches unchartered ground
In enacting the new law, Montana has go where no state has gone before in actually seeing a proposed online sweeps ban through to fruition.
Plenty have tried or still have proposals in play.
It looked as though Mississippi would be the first state to do so earlier this year, but an approved sweepstakes prohibition ultimately fell before the finish line after the complicated and very different issue of legalizing sports betting was shoehorned into the bill. Other bills in Maryland and Florida failed to pass.
But numerous other states still have anti-sweeps bills in play, including but not limited to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. In Louisiana, the Senate passed a proposed ban and the bill is making progress in the House ahead of the June 12 legislative deadline.
https://sbcamericas.com/2025/05/23/montana-officially-bans-sweepstakes/