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- Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sent letters to Google, Meta, Reddit, Snap, and TikTok asking how they keep sweepstakes casino ads away from Florida residents. Responses are due Oct. 23.
- The letters name Stake, Chumba Casino, LuckyLand, and Global Poker, the same brands Uthmeier sued in August along with five payment processors.
If you live in Florida and scroll social media, you may have seen one. A sweepstakes casino ad offering a stack of free Gold Coins, right between a friend’s vacation photos and a recipe video.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wants to know why.
Uthmeier sent letters Sept. 26 to Google, Meta, Reddit, Snap and TikTok, asking each company to explain in writing what it’s doing to keep sweepstakes casino advertising away from Florida residents, Legal Sports Report reported. The platforms have until Oct. 23 to answer.
The letters single out four brands: Stake, Chumba Casino, LuckyLand and Global Poker. VGW operates the last three.
Why the Florida AG is going after the ads
Uthmeier’s position is that sweepstakes casinos are illegal gambling under Florida law. And that it doesn’t stop with the operators.
“The promotion and advertisement of such illegal gambling in Florida is similarly unlawful under Florida law,” he wrote.
His letter to Google put it more directly: “Google therefore cannot advertise these illegal ‘sweepstake’ websites on its social media platforms in Florida.”
The target is the dual-currency setup players know well. Gold Coins are for free play and have no cash value. Sweeps Coins, or Stake Cash on Stake, come bundled in and can be redeemed for prizes. Operators say that because Sweeps Coins are available with no purchase necessary, the model is a promotional sweepstakes.
Uthmeier isn’t buying it. He called Stake Cash “redeemable wagering credits that can be cashed out for cryptocurrency, gift cards, or cash after minimal play-through requirements.”
What Florida sweepstakes casino players should know
The ad letters are the latest step in a campaign that started in August.
On Aug. 19, Uthmeier sued Stake and VGW in Hillsborough County Circuit Court. Those suits also named five payment processors: Praxis and Breeze Labs for Stake, and Yodlee, Trustly and Worldpay for VGW.
The state wants the operators permanently barred from Florida. It’s also seeking forfeiture of money Florida consumers lost, restitution, civil penalties and attorneys’ fees.
So the pressure now runs three ways. The sites. The payment rails behind coin purchases and redemptions. And now the feeds where the ads show up.
None of that has been decided in court yet. The lawsuits are still pending, and the platforms haven’t said publicly how they’ll respond.
Google’s rules already close most of the door. The company updated its ad policy in October 2025 to say sweepstakes casinos don’t qualify as social casino games. Google only certifies gambling advertisers that hold the license a market requires, and Florida doesn’t license online casinos.
The other four platforms write their own policies. Uthmeier has asked every one of them to spell those policies out.
His office, he wrote, will pursue “both those who operate and those who facilitate these criminal operations.”
Source: As reported by Legal Sports Report.
