Sweepstakes Casino Closures: Full Tracker (2024-2026)

Last verified: September 10, 2026

For balances already caught in the first category, what you can do about a stranded balance is set out stage by stage on the recourse hub.

Closed vs geo-blocked: is your balance actually at risk?

Most coverage uses one word, closed, for three different events, and the three carry very different levels of danger to your balance. This tracker separates them before counting anything.

Only the first category belongs in a closure count. Mixing the three is how a geo-block in one state gets reported as a nationwide collapse – the New York section below documents the clearest example.

The legal wave, dated and sourced

Washington players were shut out long before anyone else: RCW 9.46.240 has criminalised internet gambling there since 2006, and the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 ruling in Kater v Churchill Downs extended that logic to virtual chips. The wave that actually reshaped the market ran from March 2025 to January 2026: five states enacted explicit bans inside ten months, two state law offices went to court, and Louisiana’s tax authority produced the largest money claims of the era.

Statutes and the New York release are linked to the official text above. The Montana bill, the Louisiana opinion and the two court actions are cited by number because no stable public link exists for them; the Louisiana Department of Revenue filings in particular have never had their docket numbers published.

The New York 26: geo-blocked, not buried

No event in this market has been misreported more often. Headlines called it a shutdown of 26 casinos; forum threads still treat it as a mass extinction. What the Attorney General’s own release describes is narrower, and the wording matters:

Ending coin sales in New York – a state exit, category two above. Twenty-two of the twenty-six are still trading today. Four have since died, none of them because of New York: DingDingDing’s redemptions had frozen weeks before the letters even went out, Sweeptastic closed on 1 May 2025 – five weeks ahead of the public announcement – SweepSlots collapsed in June behind its memecoin, and Yay Casino ran an orderly wind-down that July with its redemption window honoured. New York later made the exit permanent in law, signing S5935A on 5 December 2025.

Master closure table, November 2024 to July 2026

Newest first. Player funds uses four values: PAID means the final redemption window was honoured, UNPAID means balances were stranded, MIXED means partial payment is documented, UNRECORDED means no reliable account of the money exists either way. Rows gain links as each brand’s full CasinoGone record is published; the Last verified date in the header moves with every update.

Two ways a sweeps casino dies

The orderly version follows a script. An email or site banner announces the date, a redemption window runs – typically two to three weeks – and when the deadline lands, terms drafted long in advance make whatever remains forfeit. Twelve of the deaths in the table ran that script: Sweeptastic, YayCasino.us, Vivaro.us, iCasino.com, Bitsler.io, Betty Sweeps, Kickr, Mega Frenzy, Gold Ahoy, LuckyStake, LuckyLand Slots and CoinFrenzy. Gold Ahoy is the outlier, giving four days rather than weeks. Worth knowing: across all twelve, not one documented case has surfaced of an operator paying a late redemption out of goodwill once the window shut.

The other version runs in reverse. Payments slow or stop first; the explanation, when one comes at all, arrives afterwards, and sometimes the notice never comes – Grand Vault simply vanished. The fourteen UNPAID rows all share some version of that sequence, and four of them – DingDingDing, SweepSlots, LuckyBird.io and the Sweepium group – stopped honouring redemptions while their sites were still taking coin purchases. TurboStakes adds the bleakest coda: relaunched in 2026 under a fresh Wyoming entity, marketing itself as secure and legitimate, with the pre-shutdown balances nowhere in sight.

Closure tracker – common questions