Online Social and Sweepstakes Casinos & Slots
Online Social and Sweepstakes Casinos & Slots
Legal in most US states, social and sweepstakes casinos are the obvious choice if you live in a state without a regulated gambling industry. There’s a good reason why you should give these sites a try: the games.
Social and sweepstakes sites rely on the appeal of their games to attract and keep their customers. For the most part, you will find exclusive, proprietary games on the social sites reviewed here, and you can count on them to feature a heavy emphasis on “fun.”
Basically, these sites use a system with two types of coins. You can use one token — Gold Coins, for example — to play games for fun in Standard play mode. When you run out of Gold Coins, you can purchase more.
The second type of coin — in this example, Sweeps Coins — is a legal sweepstakes entry. When you use Sweeps Coins to play games in Promotional play mode, any winnings from lucky spins are good for you to redeem cash prizes.
This second coin, redeemable for cash prizes, is always free. Sweeps Coins sites give away free amounts of currency in several ways, which we’ll discuss later in this review. But the easiest way to get the redeemable tokens is to purchase some of the play coins. That purchase may come with a bonus amount of the redeemable coin.
Social and sweepstakes sites offer welcome bonuses and a number of promotions, only without the playthrough requirement. When you win, you can redeem for cash prizes right away.
Social casino sites bonus table
| Site | Join Bonus | Welcome Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Chumba | 2,000,000 GC plus 2 FREE SC | $30 GC deal for $10 |
| LuckyLand Slots | 7,777 GC plus 10 FREE SC | $10 GC deal for $4.99 |
| Funzpoints | $2.50 | 100% up to $20 on deposit |
| Global Poker | $10 for 150,000 GC and 30 SC | $20 for 200,000 GC and 40 SC |
| Pulsz Casino | 2.3 Free Sweepstakes Coins | 173,500 GC for $9.99 |
Are social casino legit?
Yes. Social and sweepstakes casinos follow US sweepstakes law. That’s why you can play casino-like games online in nearly every state in the United States. Players also have to be at least 18 years old to sign up for an account.
How does a social/sweepstakes casino work?
For a site to satisfy sweepstakes law, there must be a contest entry that you can receive for free. When entered into a random drawing or played in a game of chance, sweepstakes entries that are randomly selected as the winner will qualify for a prize.
With respect to the aforementioned social/sweepstakes casinos, since the outcomes of games are determined by random number generator, each spin qualifies as a game of chance. When you use Sweeps Coins (for example) to play free casino games, you can then redeem any Sweeps Coins winnings for a cash prize.
Play tokens like Gold Coins allow you to play games just for fun, and since the sites covered in this review offer a lot of fun games, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to use them.
Are online social and sweepstakes casinos all the same?
It depends. That answer may not be very helpful, but it’s really not possible to come up with a definitive answer either way. While all of these casinos must operate within sweepstakes law, and all of them use a system with two different types of tokens, there also is a great deal of variance when it comes to how they operate.
The casinos in this review are among the best, and they all offer mostly proprietary games that are definitely worth checking out. However, there are differences between them, even when they are owned by the same company.
Read on for more details about the three social casinos we’ve chosen for this review: Funzpoints Casino, LuckyLand Slots, and Chumba Casino.
Best social and sweepstakes casinos for cash prizes
Funzpoints Casino
Owned by Woopla Inc., a software development company based in Nova Scotia, Canada, Funzpoints Casino launched in 2018. The biggest difference between Funzpoints and the other sweepstakes sites is that there are two ways to end up with cash prizes.
Like the other sites, when you use the virtual currency that is the equivalent of a legal sweepstakes entry — in this case, Premium Funzpoints — you can redeem winnings from gameplay for cash prizes. Premium Funzpoints are always free. The easiest way to get them is with the purchase of Standard Funzpoints as a bonus.
There’s also a daily jackpot drawing for $350. You earn jackpot entry tickets when you play games with either virtual currency. You can also win tickets when spinning the prize wheel in standard mode, and when playing special mini games with guaranteed prizes, called boosters, and the Funzone.
Funzpoints’ welcome bonus includes a no deposit sign-up gift of $2.50, or 250 Premium Funzpoints, to try games for free. While you can’t redeem the bonus funds, you’ll get 250 Premium Funzpoints in your account, which unlocks all the games. Most games and extra features are locked to new players when playing with free Standard Funzpoints.
All games and extra features are unlocked when you play with Premium Funzpoints or purchased Standard Funzpoints (for 30 days after your most recent purchase.)
Funzpoints describes the second part of its welcome bonus as a first purchase match, up to $20. Translated into sweepstakes-speak, this means that you’ll get twice as many Standard Funzpoints and free Premium Funzpoints with purchases of standard Funzpoints.
Funzpoints’ loyalty program plays a big part on the site. You earn points every time you play games. Points earn entry tickets into the daily jackpot drawing, visits to the Funzone and boosters, and help you level up.
When you level up, additional games may be unlocked, plus you’ll make progress up the VIP tiers. Higher tiers offer bigger discounts on purchases and also increase the number of points you get for each level-up.
For instance, if you make a purchase of $4.99, which normally comes with 1,000 Standard Funzpoints and a bonus of 500 Premium Funzpoints, you’ll get 2,000 and 1,000, instead.
LuckyLand Slots
LuckyLand came about when Australian-based owner Virtual Gaming Worlds acquired Open Wager, a California game studio, in 2019. Launched on Facebook later that same year, the site has built a solid customer base and developed its own style.
In addition to offering what may be the highest caliber slot games, what makes LuckyLand Slots different is that about half a dozen games hold tournaments every day for each system of tokens.
To enter one or more of the slots tournaments, you just have to play the game. The seeded prize pool is progressive and will grow along with the player activity. At the end of the day, the prize is split between the top players on the leaderboard.
As mentioned above, LuckyLand offers a loyalty program that rewards frequent purchasers with increasingly higher discounts on Gold Coin purchases, but that’s the extent of the program, unlike Funzpoints.
The site’s welcome bonus qualifies new players for FREE 7,777 Gold Coins and 10 FREE Sweeps Coins, just for registering. Plus, on first purchase, you’ll qualify for a 50,000 Gold Coin deal for just $4.99 – it’s normally $10 to purchase. You’ll also receive 10 FREE Sweeps Coins when you sign up through our links – no promo code is necessary!
Chumba Casino
LuckyLand’s sister site and VGW’s first venture, launching in 2012, Chumba Casino is the granddaddy of social casinos. It’s the only site reviewed here that offers some licensed, third-party-developed games, and it’s the only one that offers online casino table games.
The site has been tried and tested over the years. Over 1 million customers have joined, and more than 60 million Sweeps Coins have been given away. Multiple players have won more than 1 million Sweeps Coins, with one player hitting a progressive jackpot in 2020 for nearly 2 million Sweeps Coins.
New players will benefit from Chumba’s welcome bonus of 2,000,000 Gold Coins and 2 FREE Sweeps Coins with a verified account, plus a first purchase bonus of a $30 deal for just $10. That deal comes with 10,000,000 Gold Coins and 30 FREE Sweeps Coins.
How do I register to play social casino games?
To start playing games, you’ll first need to register for an account. The only requirement is that you be at least 18 years old and a resident of most US states.
The easiest way to sign up with some of the sites reviewed here is to use your Facebook login credentials. Otherwise, you’ll just need to enter a few details before you can start enjoying the games.
Note that you’ll have to go through a verification process when you request your first redemption in order to satisfy the casinos’ know your customer regulations.
Finally, bear in mind that you’ll have to switch manually between the two types of tokens on each site. You’ll have to be intentional about which coin you want to use during your time onsite.
Where can I get free Sweeps Coins?
Other than the free Sweeps Coins (or Premium Funzpoints) that come as a bonus with purchases of Gold Coins (or Standard Funzpoints), you can obtain free Sweeps Coins a number of ways from the VGW sites, including daily login bonuses and other promotions, social media giveaways and requests by USPS mail.
The only alternative way to get free Premium Funzpoints is via USPS mail. However, you earn entry tickets into the daily $350 draw with each spin, so if you win a share of the drawing, you can use it to purchase Standard Funzpoints with free Premium Funzpoints as a bonus.
A guaranteed prize of 1,000 up to 10,000 Standard Funzpoints, plus entry tickets into the jackpot drawing, are obtainable every three hours just by spinning the prize wheel.
Chumba and LuckyLand will give you a small amount of free Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins in a daily bonus just for logging in to your account. You and your Facebook friends can send up to 50 free spins to one another every day on LuckyLand, as well.
Both LuckyLand and Funzpoints offer VIP loyalty programs that lead to increasing discounts on purchases of virtual coins.
You might run across other discounts on social media, along with Sweeps Coins giveaway contests on VGW sites’ Facebook pages. Contests may require you to share a post or answer a trivia question about one of the site’s games. The site will randomly choose a number of correct answers to receive anywhere from five to 50 Sweeps Coins.
Sending a request by mail will require you to follow and detailed specifications for each site, so you’ll want to look over the rules for each first. Once you’ve formatted your request correctly for a specific site, you can mail it in to complete the process.
LuckyLand and Chumba will credit your account with five Sweeps Coins for valid requests, up to once every business day. Funzpoints will credit your account with 1,000 Standard and 500 Premium Funzpoints per each request, up to once a week.
What games can you play at social and sweepstakes sites?
These sites have a lot going for them. First and foremost, with the exception of a few licensed titles in Chumba’s game collection, these games are exclusive, and you won’t find them on other casinos.
When you factor in extra features such as the Funzone and booster mini games on Funzpoints Casino, daily tournaments on LuckyLand, and Chumba’s FireShot Progressive Jackpot series, it’s hard to imagine ever getting bored.
Chumba and LuckyLand may be sister sites and share the same owner, but there’s no game overlap between them. Chumba offers about 80 games, including five or so table games. Chumba’s table games are a couple of versions of blackjack, two roulette variants, and a Jacks or Better video poker game.
LuckyLand offers about 40 high-tech games that feature the latest technology, including 3D animations, walking wilds, and expanding reels.
Funzpoints has about 20 games that are all rated low volatility and have an excellent return-to-player ratio of 96.5%, so you can expect to see lots of wins to help you level up faster. You’ll find a couple of keno games on Funzpoints, as well.
Chumba and LuckyLand both feature (different) progressive jackpot games that regularly pay out in six figures for Sweeps Coins.
Poker games at Global Poker
VGW’s Global Poker offers No Limit Texas Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha ring games, sit and go’s, multi-table tournaments and jackpot sit and go’s at all times of the day and night, seven days a week. You also might find a Crazy Pineapple MTT once in a while.
About 90% of all site traffic will be seated at Sweeps Coins tables, but that could easily mean that 1,000 players are playing for Gold Coin stakes during peak weekend and evening hours.
Whether you’re playing with Sweeps or Gold Coins, nearly three quarters of all players will be participating in a Global Poker MTT with tournament entries ranging from micro to high stakes.
Note that the site is set to Gold Coin games by default when you log in. While it’s easy enough to tell which type of token you’re using once you start entering into games, double-check to make sure the tables you’re thinking about joining are really what you expect them to be.
Sign up for a new account with our promo code FLUSH to become eligible for Global Poker’s sign-up bonus deal. For $10, you can receive 150,000 Gold Coins and 30 FREE Sweeps Coins to get you started.