Florida AG Gives Big Tech Until Oct. 23 on Sweepstakes Casino Ads
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has sent letters to Google, Meta, Reddit, Snap, and TikTok demanding they confirm in writing by October 23 that they've stopped advertising sweepstakes casinos to Florida residents, escalating the state's ongoing campaign against the sweepstakes-gaming model.
What the letters demand
The letters, sent Friday and reported this week by industry outlets, name four specific sweepstakes operators — Stake, Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots, and Global Poker — and ask each platform to detail the steps it has taken to stop promoting those sites to Florida residents. Uthmeier's office argues that sweepstakes casinos, which let players convert promotional credits into cash, cryptocurrency, or gift cards, are operating a real-money casino product without the state license Florida law requires for that kind of gambling. "Promoting illegal gambling is a crime," Uthmeier said, adding that the platforms have until October 23 to confirm in writing that they've stopped running the ads.
Notably, the letters also point out that continuing to run these ads may put the platforms in violation of their own advertising rules — Google updated its gambling ad policy in October 2025 to require real-money gambling advertisers to hold both a certification and a state license, neither of which is available to online casino operators in Florida.
Part of a broader pattern
This is the latest in a series of actions Florida has taken against the sweepstakes-casino model this year, following an August 2026 round of complaints the state filed against operators and their payment processors seeking injunctions and consumer restitution — a campaign we covered in an earlier report on Florida's lawsuit against VGW and Stake. Other states, including Kentucky, New York, and Tennessee, have pursued similar legal challenges against sweepstakes operators over the past year, part of a broader national push by regulators to treat the dual-currency sweepstakes model as unlicensed gambling rather than a legally distinct promotional sweepstakes.
Why it matters to players
If the platforms comply, Florida residents could see sweepstakes-casino advertising disappear from Google, Meta, Reddit, Snap, and TikTok well before the sites themselves are forced to stop operating, since this action targets the ad channels rather than the operators directly. For players in states where the legal status of sweepstakes casinos is contested, it's a reminder that the products' access and marketing can shift quickly as state enforcement actions accumulate — worth keeping in mind before relying on any single platform for real-money-style casino play in a state actively challenging its legality.