One of the most popular sweepstakes casinos in the United States is choosing to stay live and operational in California until the very last moment sweeps gaming is legal in the state.
Sweepsy has learned that WOW Vegas officials have decided to remain in California all the way up until Jan. 1, 2026, when Assembly Bill 831 will take effect and sweepstakes casinos will become officially illegal.
Sweeps casino operators are responding in a variety of ways to Gov. Gavin Newsom signing AB831 into law, with some leaving the state immediately, some taking a phased approach, and others choosing to stay until the very last second.
WOW Vegas is the largest brand that’s now known to fall into that third category.
Looking at the different operator responses in CA
There are a handful of publicly known sweepstakes casinos that have either already left California or are in the process of doing so.
Sweepsy has previously reported on Carnival Citi, Dara Casino, and Ruby Sweeps all shutting down their platforms in California within a two-week stretch after the California Legislature passed AB831 on Sept. 12.
Then there’s High 5 Casino, which originally planned an early September exit from California but recently updated that timeline to a full departure starting Oct. 20. High 5 is the biggest brand to have already left California.
Other operators are making strategy decisions outside when to leave the state.
Some have reopened in states they had previously restricted — Baba Casino, for example, recently went live again in six states, while Spree resumed operations in Alabama and Georgia — in what are more than likely decisions aimed at maximizing revenue in states outside California in anticipation of the huge revenue loss there.
Meanwhile, A1 Development LLC lowered the minimum age requirement for NoLimitCoins, Fortune Wheelz, and Tao Fortune back to 18, ending a five-month stretch at 21. The timing suggests this move is also aimed at easing losses from California becoming off limits.
Not all operators can afford those losses. Vivaro.us, for instance, permanently closed on Oct. 1, citing “increasing regulatory uncertainty surrounding sweepstakes casinos in the United States.”
AB831 casts a wide net
There is nothing in AB831 that prevents operators from allowing customers to play its Sweeps Coin games all the way until 11:59 p.m. the night of Dec. 31, 2025. It’s standard for California bills to have effective dates on Jan. 1 of the year following the end of the legislative session — unless the bill is amended to be passed as an urgency bill, which AB831 was not.
So WOW Vegas will not be the only operator to maintain their California presence right up until the legality deadline.
The sweeps casinos that have already left California, and that will leave in advance of that Jan. 1 effective date, are likely making those decisions out of an abundance of caution, shielding themselves from even the possibility of something slipping through the cracks in 2026 and opening themselves up to criminal prosecution or even profits disgorgement.
AB831’s language casts arguably the widest net of all sweeps ban bills passed in 2025.
In addition to criminalizing the sweeps casino operators, themselves, AB831 also targets “any entity, financial institution, payment processor, geolocation provider, gaming content supplier, platform provider, or media affiliate [that] knowingly and willfully support[s] directly or indirectly the operation, conduct, or promotion of an online sweepstakes game within this state,” according to the bill’s digest.
That’s a lot of potentially liable parties, and those parties could choose to cut ties with a sweeps operator across the entire U.S. if it makes a mistake in California and creates legal trouble for it and all its partners.
So, again, some of these operators are just cutting their losses now, shutting things down, and avoiding any potential stress or headaches surrounding that Jan. 1, 2026 effective date.
And just what are those losses?
Eilers & Krejcik Gaming analysts had projected that roughly 17.3% of all U.S. sweepstakes casino revenue in 2025 would come from California. Once it became evident that AB831 would pass, the firm trimmed its 2025 forecast from $4.6 billion to $4 billion, and later cut its 2026 projection even further, to $3.6 billion.
Other states to watch?
At the Global Gaming Expo, panelists discussing the future of sweepstakes casinos pointed to Texas and Florida as the most likely states to target the industry next. Howard Glaser of Light & Wonder later added Ohio and Illinois to that list.
It feels like there’s a strong chance Florida will tighten restrictions in 2026, given the influence of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which owns Hard Rock International. We just saw how emphatically tribal interests defeated sweeps gaming in California. Plus, there’s already an appetite for a ban in Florida, as the state saw two bills outlawing sweeps casinos introduced before time ran out in the 2025 legislative session.
By contrast, Texas won’t be able to take any action until its next legislative session in 2027. However, vocal members of the anti-sweeps coalition have discussed on LinkedIn about how the ground appears fertile in Texas for the Attorney General to take action against sweeps casino operators, like we’ve seen in Louisiana and New York.
This type of action, though, doesn’t carry the same effect as a passed piece of legislation, which, again, can’t happen until 2027 at the earliest in Texas.
In Ohio, the only active bill has stalled, largely because it also includes the legalization of real-money online casinos — a difficult sell across most U.S. states. Meanwhile, Illinois saw its proposed sweeps ban fail to gain any traction in the 2025 session.
