The most prominent organization advocating sweepstakes casinos is reorganizing and beefing up its leadership structure.
In a press release sent out earlier this week, the Social Gaming and Leadership Alliance announced Sean Ostrow had shifted from Managing Director to Executive Director, and that it had also added four new members of its Board of Directors in Derek Brinkman, Lloyd Melnick, Bryan Schroeder, and Jeff Duncan, the former Executive Director.
“As I transition to the Board of Directors, I am confident Sean is the right leader to guide SGLA through its next phase of growth,” Duncan said via the release, “and continue advocating for innovation, responsible social gameplay and commonsense regulatory frameworks.”
Who’s joining the Board of Directors?
Brinkman currently leads new product initiatives at VGW, the owner of Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots, Global Poker, LuckyLand Slots, and yet-to-launch United Slots, as Chief New Products Officer, with responsibility for operations and financial performance across the company’s emerging offerings while also contributing to its Social Plus division.
Duncan, a former United States representative from South Carolina, is a founding partner of Covenant Government Affairs and previously headed the SGLA as its executive director.
Melnick now serves on the board while holding the position of Chief Government Affairs Officer at VGW, following earlier tenures there as Chief Growth Officer and as the head of Chumba Casino. Schroeder, currently General Counsel at ARB Interactive, which owns Modo.us and Publishers Clearing House, brings extensive gaming-sector legal and regulatory expertise developed through senior compliance and legal leadership posts at Tipico North America and Hard Rock Digital.
A new role for a familiar face in Ostrow
Ostrow was named the SGLA’s Managing Director back in October 2025.
Before joining the SGLA, Ostrow worked at the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe as an adviser on public policy and strategy. There, he helped drive the legislative agenda of the Sports Betting Alliance and counseled leading sports organizations, including Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the PGA Tour. Earlier, during his tenure at FanDuel, he was key in securing the enactment of fantasy sports laws across several states.
“Sean has been instrumental in building the Social Gaming Leadership Alliance into a respected voice for the Social Plus gaming industry,” Duncan said. “During his time as Managing Director, he demonstrated the strategic vision, policy expertise and collaborative leadership needed to advance our mission.”
Better performance in 2026 for SGLA
The chatter in and around the industry late last year was that the SGLA brought Ostrow in for his lobbying prowess, as it became clear throughout 2025 that sweepstakes casinos were in the midst of legal and regulatory scrutiny the likes of which they’d never seen.
Realistically, Ostrow started too late in 2025 to be able to do anything about markets where anti-sweeps momentum had already built up, and major states including California, New York, and New Jersey became off-limits for Sweeps Coin gameplay.
But it’s a better gauge to perhaps judge Ostrow’s lobbying efficacy by how 2026 played out for the online sweepstakes gaming industry in 2026, his first full year at the SGLA.
And, as 2026 began, many critics of sweepstakes casinos expected the year to essentially be doomsday for the industry. Although operators did suffer meaningful setbacks, it also logged several important victories.
The total addressable market shrunk a bit, with Sweeps Coin play ending in Indiana, Maine, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Even so, those loss don’t approach the impact of the massive losses in 2025 — again, California, New York, and New Jersey, among others.
In 2026, legislatures introduced increasingly targeted proposals — Maine’s being a prime example — designed specifically to address the mechanics of dual-currency gaming. Yet sweepstakes casinos remain active across most of the country, and the number of operators has reached a record level.
Sweeps bans failed to pass in Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Virginia, and Mississippi, giving the industry an equal number of legislative victories and defeats: five apiece. (Iowa did also pass a bill allowing the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission to send cease-and-desists to sweeps casinos, but the bill didn’t do anything to actually ban Sweeps Coin gameplay.)
Forecasting the landscape in 2027
As we look ahead to 2027, most sweepstakes gaming sites are operating in 30-plus states — and some even more if they’ve kept Gold Coin gameplay live in jurisdictions where Sweeps Coin gameplay is banned.
(Sweeps Coin gameplay has been the problematic one for operators because Sweeps Coins can be redeemed for real money, which has led some lawmakers and regulators to argue playing casino-style games is comparable to gambling with real money.)
Of the 20 states with the largest populations, only seven have laws on the books banning sweepstakes casinos in some form or fashion: No. 1 California, No. 4 New York, No. 10 Michigan, No. 11 New Jersey, No. 13 Washington, No. 15 Tennessee, and No. 17 Indiana.
Four other states — No. 3 Florida, No. 6 Illinois, No. 14 Arizona, and No. 19 Maryland — have a presence of cease-and-desist orders, although those aren’t as effective at keeping operators inactive as actual passed laws.
Then, the remaining nine — No. 2 Texas, No. 5 Pennsylvania, No. 6 Ohio, No. 7 Georgia, No. 9 North Carolina, No. 12 Virginia, No. 16 Massachusetts, No. 18 Missouri, and No. 20 Colorado — have nothing in place meant to boot sweeps casinos out of the state.
Ohio and Massachusetts did consider legislation that would have banned sweepstakes casinos in 2025 and 2026, but neither advanced very far at all. Both bills would have also legalized real money iGaming, which was the main reason they didn’t generate much traction.
Virginia and Maryland also saw bills fail that would have legalized real-money iGaming and banned sweeps casinos. However, a separate bill in Virginia — Senate Bill 579 — that would only outlaw sweeps casinos was voted to be further evaluated in the 2027 session, so we already know Virginia will be a state to watch.
Some sweepstakes operators also include Pennsylvania in their list of excluded markets, as they choose to not operate in any market that currently has real-money online casinos.
