Are sweepstake casinos legal in California?
Yes. Sweepstakes are social casinos, with no purchase necessary to play and win vouchers, prizes and redeem coins for cash. Also, you are not able to purchase Sweepstakes Coins, but instead they re gifted when you purchase free play coins (often called Gold Coins). This means they are legitimate and legal under sweepstakes laws.
Sweepstakes are legal in pretty much all American States, and Canada. One notable exception is Michigan, but they offer real money casino, regulated by their State Government, so players still have great options. They just don't get the no purchase necessary to win benefit that you get if you can play at sweepstakes.
Whether sweepstakes casinos will be legal in California in the future is a different question. If they decide to legalize real money casino, they may well bring in a law that would ban sweepstakes. This is logical, because the State would want to maximize their revenues from the real money casino.
Will genuine Vegas games be available at California sweepstakes soon??
Even though the selection of slots available at sweepstakes casinos is immense, and of a world-class quality (10x better than you get in offshore real money casinos), a lot of us still yearn for the exact same games we play in Vegas.
The list of those games is huge, but for a start, I'd personally love to see Buffalo, Buffalo Gold, Cleopatra, Wheel of Fortune 3 reel games, and some of the old school classics like Texas Tea, Lobstermania, DaVinci Diamonds, and Quick Hit.
There definitely is a chance that these games appear in sweepstake casinos in California at some stage. This is because many of the biggest and best producers have already moved into social casino already. But that is pure social, but not yet sweepstakes social casinos, where you can redeem coins for vouchers and cash.
One Californian sweepstakes casino that is worth looking at is High 5 Casino. High 5 is owned by Scientific Gaming, which also owns IGT and WMS. So we could see some amazing games appear there soon.
Likewise, Aristocrat, who make games like Buffalo, Miss Kitty, Queen of the Nile, 50 Lions, Timber Wolf etc., also run a social casino that is very highly rated. This casino is called Heart of Vegas and is a pure play social casino.
So, you can play just for fun, but there is no sweepstakes aspect to it. This means you don't get to redeem coins for cash prizes, but it is still great fun. Hopefully they introduce sweepstakes soon to make it even more fun.
What would happen if California decided to ban sweepstakes casinos?
If sweepstakes did get banned one day, players would get their money back for any coins packages they may have purchased, or get plenty of chance to redeem their tokens for cash or vouchers prizes to the casino closing it's doors.
The sweepstakes casinos out there trading are all registered in the US to trade under sweepstakes law. Although they don't trade under gambling licences (as it is not classed as gambling, given the 'no purchase necessary' sweepstake requirement), they do have to comply with US laws.
