iGaming Daily

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when it looked like the pendulum was swinging in the favor of the sweepstakes industry, a rash of news suggests 2025 has more speed bumps in order for the unregulated market. The biggest of those speed bumps appears to be New York, where industry leader VGW is planning to phase out the sweeps going side of its operations and only offer free-to-play games going forward. Throw in some late movement in some state legislatures and yet another trade group and it seems time to revisit just what is happening

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in the world of sweeps gaming. And that is what we are going to do today on iGaming Daily brought to you by Optimo, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. I am Jessica Wellman, managing editor of SBC media, joined by media manager Charlie Horner. Charlie, we're like a shark. If too many weeks go by that we don't question and discuss sweeps, I think we just up and die.

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Yeah, it's been a little while. We had a few weeks where we had to talk about prediction markets. I'm a little bit bored of prediction markets now. Bring me back to the sweeps. Yeah, you know was funny is in Florida, there was like a DFS panel and it was running late and I ended up not being able to sit through it. I went ahead and left and it wasn't particularly well attended. And I was like, you're not just old news, you're old, old news. So yeah, DFS, the

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the flour and fruit baskets, edible arrangements, budget has to be through the roof. Sweeps thought they were getting a breather, but this is not the case. Now, the big headline that we're going to talk about today is that VGW is not leaving New York, but they are shutting down kind of the side of the business that is considered problematic, which is that dual currency sweeps coin side of the system, the gold coin side, which you can still like,

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pay money to get gold coins, like they're still going to make money that way, is going to be sticking around. When you heard this, Charlie, were you aware that they're kind of the last group to do this and that other social casinos have already kind of taken this step? See, I remember a few weeks back, whenever the news was broken, the high five had left. I remember that being a big line and that was something we spoke about.

02:16
Yeah, I wasn't aware that VGW was the last man standing, if you will. Yeah, that's interesting that they stuck it out until the very end. Of the big names, I'm pretty sure they're the last one. I'm sure there are real rogue, rinky-dink operators still doing this, but basically all of the Social and Promotional Gaming Association members did this step a couple months ago.

02:42
And then now VGW has started communicating with customers a phased out process so that Sweeps coins are gone by August. You surprised they're conceding a big state like New York? There's one thing to be like, fine Delaware, we'll leave. New York, a bit of a different case though, right? Yeah, on the surface of things, you would assume that they would fight tooth and nail to stay in New York, know, massive player base.

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ideal demographic, plenty of young professionals who you kind of want to attract onto your platform. Yeah, you would assume that they would be fighting till the end to stay in New York, but it doesn't appear to be the case. They seem to have just sort of voluntarily up and left. Yeah, let me be honest. This one surprised me a little bit in that I have said in our editorial meetings,

03:39
I think once a big state comes into play, you're going to see a different response. And I kind of had grouped New York in with Georgia, Texas, California. And to be fair, this was a mistake on my part, which is New York is a bit different than those markets in that, you know, like take Georgia and Texas, for example, no casinos whatsoever, no real regulated gambling whatsoever.

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New York, you have casinos, have proximity to New Jersey where you can play online casinos, you have online sports betting, you have a lot of opportunities to participate in activities that are similar to what sweepstakes casino and sweepstakes sites offer. So on me, I might've been underestimating just how big New York is for some of these markets.

04:34
What I also might have been underestimating is just how big the free to play or freemium side of the business is. So nobody's really fully said this on record or they have, they haven't said what the discussions have been, but the New York state gaming commission has been in communication with all of these people, these groups about shutting down the sweeps element.

04:58
I'm not sure, I need to go back and look. I probably should have done my homework a little bit better on whether the high fives of the world are keeping the social casino element in the state and like VGW just kind of shutting down the other piece. But you have to think there's wiggle room somewhere here based on the fact that they're voluntarily kind of leaving and being really rather polite about it in their statements, right?

05:28
Yeah, and that goes against the grain of just how the sweeps regulator relationship has been over the last sort of 12 months really. It seems to have been quite tense, quite ferocious at times. This does seem like one where there's quite a bit of back-channeling going on. There's lots of conversations behind the scenes. And yeah, it seems quite, yeah, quite polite.

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pleasant and yeah, okay, we'll take a step back if you like. would want to be on the New York State Gaming Commission side, or good side, given that the sweeps bill that is making progress in New York does basically kind of just, like we've talked to death that if you don't define these bills properly, you're going to inevitably have issues. And an amendment to the New York one basically says,

06:24
Okay, the New York State gaming commission is going to decide what is and isn't a dual currency system, which is, suppose, a fix. It's a funny fix to me to just be like, this group who in theory could be heavily influenced by certain entities, entities that I have called out at an op-ed do indeed operate what sure seems like a dual currency social casino.

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Basically, if you can, you can go check this out on iGamingExpert. I just happened to look at like the freemium style social casinos associated with land-based casinos and basically all of them have some mechanism to earn rewards in the real world. So the people that are super tight with them, that group is now going to be the one that decides whether those people are in violation or not.

07:18
It's not the, it's not the cleanest fix. I'll put it that way. No, it's it's it's a fix. Yeah. It might not be the fix that works. Um, yeah, that's leaving it down to individual choice, particularly when those people can be appointed with whatever vested interests that they want. Yeah. It can be, uh, quite dangerous actually. I would suggest quite dangerous. You know, uh,

07:46
At the event in Florida, I know I was giving Sean Fluardi a rough time about this where he kept comparing it to like McDonald's and burgers and talking about how disingenuous this is. But I'm going to point out the, let's just grab the New York language. A game contest or promotion that utilizes a dual currency system of payment, allowing the player to exchange the currency for any cash prize, cash award or cash equivalents. So.

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Again, I'm going to just, I was telling the Hard Rock guys, was like, I'm sorry that you're like the example I use, but because I'm super familiar with your rewards program as a loyal customer, I tend to. like on the Hard Rock social casino, you earn unity credits for however much you purchase in the free to play coins.

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Unity credits are the tier, the point system and reward system used by Hard Rock Rail Money casinos in which however many, like it's like 1000 points, Unity points equates to $100, I think, a $1 worth of comps in the casino. Like you can, as someone, I'm literally going tonight. I'm gonna, mixed bag for Hard Rock. Go into Prime Rib Night at the Council of...

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steakhouse tonight because I have a comp that's going to expire. But yeah, it has real, they have real money value. You know, like I'm going to go eat delicious food tonight in exchange for points that I have plus an additional comp. So like, it sure sounds like based on your vague definition, this fit. Yeah. Same thing with like Starbucks. Like you get a bunch of stars, you turn them in, you get a latte. Like that's something with cash.

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equivalent that I agree like the Monopoly game, the drawings, these sorts of things, that's a bit excessive. But name a rewards program in which you cannot like earn points and redeem it for money. That's basically all of them. least over here. That's the essence of why they exist. yeah, to say that these

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These programs would be outlawed because we're trying to, trying to conjure up some sort of definition that just only attacks these, this group of sweepstake casinos. It's really difficult. It's really, really difficult. don't envy them. It's it's a very difficult thing to take like what is basically a Venn diagram where there's a circle and there's something inside the circle.

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and make just like a doughnut out of it so that, God, the video people are really gonna clip this out, Producer James, because otherwise the audio listeners are baffled. You're essentially trying to cut a hole in a circle of what counts and what doesn't count and leave the rest intact. I don't envy them. It's incredibly difficult. I suppose the solution is to take a non-elected government body and let them pick and choose. That's one way you can do it.

11:03
Or you can come up with some different terms as we've seen in some other states bills, which we will talk about when we get back from break.

11:13
All right. Welcome back to iGaming Daily, where we are talking about the latest developments in the sweep saga of 2025. We've got New York is kind of the big announcement, but we've also got two states making a reasonable amount of progress in potentially banning sweepstakes. Montana has signed its bill into law. Meanwhile, Louisiana and Connecticut both have bills.

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that have made it through one chamber and are on their way to the other one, which is crossing over from one to the other is usually considered like a pretty big deal. think in both of these instances though, we are coming up on the end of the legislative deadline that could mean there's just not enough time to get to these. So this often happens with gaming related bills as well, doesn't it? That we end up getting to the

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end of the session and there are just more important issues at play that these lawmakers need to decide on. These final days of the session where they're just voting on dozens of bills and yeah, they can get left or forgotten about or ignored. read the bill, this one is just like super vague. It's the definition is a sweepstakes or I mean, they don't even try to define sweepstakes.

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uses a simulated gambling device or allows or facilitates participation in any real or simulated online casino gaming or sports wagering. Again, that sounds like literally any social casino to me. I don't see the words dual currency anywhere. They just, and a couple of these states have done this. I think Mississippi was another example where they just throw in sweepstakes and assume that that is sufficient to define it. And I would say the SPGA is going to tell you that it's not.

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You know, who else might tell you that it's not? The second social gaming trade group association, for some reason, there are two of these now. And now we've got the social gaming leadership alliance. this one involves VGW as well as McLuck and Yellow Social Interactive, which I think, I mean, these are all.

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not the doing business as names play studios, yellow social interactive, ARB interactive and B2 operations. I know McLuck is one of those also new way the payment processor is getting involved with this because Connecticut, New York, a lot of these bills are trying to loop in and punish suppliers that serve both sectors. So it's interesting to see somebody come in as a supplier and be like, hold up, wait a minute. Interesting that VGW chose to be in this one and not the other one.

14:09
Yeah, that is odd. I didn't think this space was that big that it needed two trade buddies. I can't lie. And I feel like this split might not serve their interests as well as they might want it to. mean, to be a fly on the wall, I want to know, like, what is it that one group wants that the other doesn't? Yeah. Is it that one group has people in it that people aren't necessarily keen to align themselves with?

14:38
Why are there two is really my big question. It's one no one's going to give me the answer, but being the gossips that we are, Charlie, you have to sit here and think like it's a little weird that one of you wants to be involved in this and the other doesn't. This one, by the way, also includes a former congressman named Jeff Duggan who he's a Tea Party Republican with an interesting

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historical set of votes and interests that he supports. I therefore am not surprised that somebody of that political ilk is going to take the rather libertarian stance that let business be business. yeah, that was that I they announced it they announced Jeff Duggan I have emailed about a couple of issues since then and not really heard much back that I'm curious how talkative they'll be. It's a high bar to match like

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the vitriol of the SPGA quotes in press releases. So just know, S-G-L-A, that we expect a lot from you. Yeah, we want them to be ferocious. Don't pull any punches. Take the gloves off because, I mean, maybe that's it. Maybe they'll be like the polite to mirror one. SPGA will be the aggressive one. And then it's like good cop, bad cop. And they swoop in.

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and talk to regulators and lawmakers and they're like, do you want to deal with the angry ones or do you want to deal with us? And this is a whole big ploy by the entire industry to get things done. Well, know, VGW did just quietly leave New York. So maybe that's what's going on. Maybe. All right. I'm going to do, I usually ask Charlie for plugs, but I'm going to quickly do a plug. Since we talked about lottery couriers briefly, I...

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had the pleasure of talking with Lotto.com CEO, Thomas Metzger, about the whole Texas situation, where his company and him specifically have actually filed a lawsuit against the Texas lottery. And as you know from our podcast, I almost never get anybody to talk about anything while litigation is pending. So the fact that he was willing to be pretty candid with us about what was going on and why he felt the need to take these steps ended up being a pretty interesting read.

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Also, reassurances Connecticut, it appears couriers, not just lotto.com, but the three big ones, lottery, jackpot, jackpot, all have a policy. We won't come into your state unless you say it's okay. So that's why some of these lottery courier bills are kind of funny. It's just like, okay, well, they're not coming anyways, but glad you fixed that. I have that going on. Charlie, what is going on in your neck of the woods that people should check out?

17:35
Um, I'll give a plug to an interview I did recently with Altenaz Matthew Ferraro. Yes, I liked this one on limiting bettors. Yeah, it was. Yeah. We spoke about limiting bettors and, and his argument is that we, as an industry, we have lots of policies on, on limiting sharp bettors. Maybe we're not doing the same as we probably could do for problem gamblers and the RG side of things. So that's a really interesting look at limiting bettors, which

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we've spoke about on this podcast before. It's something that the M.G.C. are really looking at. And we should have a part two with Matthew coming out very shortly. And that'll be about micro betting. So keep an eye out for that on SBC Americas. Yeah, the limiting bettors one. We didn't do a part on this, but Wyoming, by the way, a regulator, a investigator there took a look at it. It was just like, this is not a thing we should care about.

18:28
It was a very interesting, very stark difference to how Massachusetts is approaching things. So what I liked so much about the interview was that finally someone is like, it's complicated. There are reasons you have to, you have RG stuff. There's a lot of cases that kind of fall in the middle between free for all, everyone bets everything and everybody's allowed to limit whoever they feel like. definitely.

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Check that out, check out what else we've got going on on SBC Americas and throughout the SBC network and come back and check out another episode of iGaming Daily tomorrow.