Close to seventy percent of participants use sweepstakes to try and win money.

Key Points

• AGA reports that ninety percent of sweepstakes players believe their activity is gambling.
• Sixty-eight percent join sweepstakes mainly to get money.
• Most sweepstakes users have lower incomes, are white, and fall between thirty-one and forty years old.

New data from the American Gaming Association

The American Gaming Association (AGA) released survey numbers about sweepstakes casinos in the USA. Players told AGA that ninety percent of them treat sweepstakes sites as gambling, with fifty-nine percent saying it is “definitely gambling” and thirty-one percent thinking it is “probably gambling.” Sixty-eight percent admit their reason to visit these sites is to win money, and almost seventy percent view sweepstakes casinos as places where people bet real money.

Eighty percent of the users spend money at least one time monthly, and close to half said they pay each week. Numbers for sweepstakes are similar to paid online casino players, as eighty-two percent in iGaming said they play for money. Fun matters more for free games, with seventy-three percent of free-play customers saying they just want to enjoy playing. The study found that in US states without rules for sweepstakes, the number of sweepstakes users becomes twice as high. Half of the online casino advertisements that Americans viewed in early 2025 came from sweepstakes sites not based in the country. New Jersey stopped sweepstakes in July.

AGA government relations VP Tres York comments

AGA’s Tres York, Vice President for Government Relations, remarked that these companies act like legal platforms but actually work outside US regulation. York says responsible gaming tools are nearly missing, there is no proper rule-keeping, and players lack safety protections. He also claimed this situation is a trick that poses a real risk to those who play. AGA shared typical player details: Thirty-five percent are between thirty-one and forty years old, twenty-seven percent are aged forty-one to fifty, and twenty-two percent are twenty-one to thirty. Player gender was divided nearly evenly since fifty-one percent are men, while forty-nine percent are women.

Sixty-nine percent of users are white, and forty-two percent have a family income below fifty thousand dollars, which AGA says is under the US average. Full-time jobs go to seventy-one percent, but seventeen percent have no work, and thirty-eight percent stopped school after finishing high school. iGaming users have a similar demographic split, though there are a little more men in that group.