Online Social and Sweepstakes Casinos & Slots
Legal in most US states, social and sweepstakes casinos are the obvious choice if you live in a state without a regulated gambling industry. There’s a good reason why you should give these sites a try: the games.
Social and sweepstakes sites rely on the appeal of their games to attract and keep their customers. For the most part, you will find exclusive, proprietary games on the social sites reviewed here, and you can count on them to feature a heavy emphasis on “fun.”
Basically, these sites use a system with two types of coins. You can use one token — Gold Coins, for example — to play games for fun in Standard play mode. When you run out of Gold Coins, you can purchase more.
The second type of coin — in this example, Sweeps Coins — is a legal sweepstakes entry. When you use Sweeps Coins to play games in Promotional play mode, any winnings from lucky spins are good for you to redeem cash prizes.
This second coin, redeemable for cash prizes, is always free. Sweeps Coins sites give away free amounts of currency in several ways, which we’ll discuss later in this review. But the easiest way to get the redeemable tokens is to purchase some of the play coins. That purchase may come with a bonus amount of the redeemable coin.
Social and sweepstakes sites offer welcome bonuses and a number of promotions, only without the playthrough requirement. When you win, you can redeem for cash prizes right away.
Are social casino legit?
Yes. Social and sweepstakes casinos follow US sweepstakes law. That’s why you can play casino-like games online in nearly every state in the United States. Players also have to be at least 18 years old to sign up for an account.
How does a social/sweepstakes casino work?
For a site to satisfy sweepstakes law, there must be a contest entry that you can receive for free. When entered into a random drawing or played in a game of chance, sweepstakes entries that are randomly selected as the winner will qualify for a prize.
With respect to the aforementioned social/sweepstakes casinos, since the outcomes of games are determined by random number generator, each spin qualifies as a game of chance. When you use Sweeps Coins (for example) to play free casino games, you can then redeem any Sweeps Coins winnings for a cash prize.
Play tokens like Gold Coins allow you to play games just for fun, and since the sites covered in this review offer a lot of fun games, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to use them.
Are online social and sweepstakes casinos all the same?
It depends. That answer may not be very helpful, but it’s really not possible to come up with a definitive answer either way. While all of these casinos must operate within sweepstakes law, and all of them use a system with two different types of tokens, there also is a great deal of variance when it comes to how they operate.
The casinos in this review are among the best, and they all offer mostly proprietary games that are definitely worth checking out. However, there are differences between them, even when they are owned by the same company.
Please note: Chumba, Luckyland and Global Poker are no longer available in the Michigan market.
Best social and sweepstakes casino for cash prizes
Funzpoints Casino
Owned by Woopla Inc., a software development company based in Nova Scotia, Canada, Funzpoints Casino launched in 2018. The biggest difference between Funzpoints and the other sweepstakes sites is that there are two ways to end up with cash prizes.
Like the other sites, when you use the virtual currency that is the equivalent of a legal sweepstakes entry — in this case, Premium Funzpoints — you can redeem winnings from gameplay for cash prizes. Premium Funzpoints are always free. The easiest way to get them is with the purchase of Standard Funzpoints as a bonus.
There’s also a daily jackpot drawing for $350. You earn jackpot entry tickets when you play games with either virtual currency. You can also win tickets when spinning the prize wheel in standard mode, and when playing special mini games with guaranteed prizes, called boosters, and the Funzone.
Funzpoints’ welcome bonus includes a no deposit sign-up gift of $2.50, or 250 Premium Funzpoints, to try games for free. While you can’t redeem the bonus funds, you’ll get 250 Premium Funzpoints in your account, which unlocks all the games. Most games and extra features are locked to new players when playing with free Standard Funzpoints.
All games and extra features are unlocked when you play with Premium Funzpoints or purchased Standard Funzpoints (for 30 days after your most recent purchase.)
Funzpoints describes the second part of its welcome bonus as a first purchase match, up to $20. Translated into sweepstakes-speak, this means that you’ll get twice as many Standard Funzpoints and free Premium Funzpoints with purchases of standard Funzpoints.
Funzpoints’ loyalty program plays a big part on the site. You earn points every time you play games. Points earn entry tickets into the daily jackpot drawing, visits to the Funzone and boosters, and help you level up.
When you level up, additional games may be unlocked, plus you’ll make progress up the VIP tiers. Higher tiers offer bigger discounts on purchases and also increase the number of points you get for each level-up.
For instance, if you make a purchase of $4.99, which normally comes with 1,000 Standard Funzpoints and a bonus of 500 Premium Funzpoints, you’ll get 2,000 and 1,000, instead.
How do I register to play social casino games?
To start playing games, you’ll first need to register for an account. The only requirement is that you be at least 18 years old and a resident of most US states.
The easiest way to sign up with some of the sites reviewed here is to use your Facebook login credentials. Otherwise, you’ll just need to enter a few details before you can start enjoying the games.
Note that you’ll have to go through a verification process when you request your first redemption in order to satisfy the casinos’ know your customer regulations.
Finally, bear in mind that you’ll have to switch manually between the two types of tokens on each site. You’ll have to be intentional about which coin you want to use during your time onsite.
Where can I get free Sweeps Coins?
Other than the free Sweeps Coins (or Premium Funzpoints) that come as a bonus with purchases of Gold Coins (or Standard Funzpoints), you can obtain free Sweeps Coins a number of ways from the VGW sites, including daily login bonuses and other promotions, social media giveaways and requests by USPS mail.
The only alternative way to get free Premium Funzpoints is via USPS mail. However, you earn entry tickets into the daily $350 draw with each spin, so if you win a share of the drawing, you can use it to purchase Standard Funzpoints with free Premium Funzpoints as a bonus.
A guaranteed prize of 1,000 up to 10,000 Standard Funzpoints, plus entry tickets into the jackpot drawing, are obtainable every three hours just by spinning the prize wheel.
Funzpoints offers VIP loyalty programs that lead to increasing discounts on purchases of virtual coins.
You might run across other discounts on social media, along with Sweeps Coins giveaway contests on VGW sites’ Facebook pages. Contests may require you to share a post or answer a trivia question about one of the site’s games. The site will randomly choose a number of correct answers to receive anywhere from five to 50 Sweeps Coins.
Sending a request by mail will require you to follow and detailed specifications for each site, so you’ll want to look over the rules for each first. Once you’ve formatted your request correctly for a specific site, you can mail it in to complete the process.
Funzpoints will credit your account with 1,000 Standard and 500 Premium Funzpoints per each request, up to once a week.