American Gaming Association study: Patrons consider sweepstakes to be gambling
The American Gaming Association suspected there were plenty of customers using sweepstakes sites as a way to gamble.
A recent study, Sweepstakes Casino Player Profile & Advertising Trends, confirmed the AGA’s suspicions. The study revealed that 90% of patrons who visit sweepstakes sites consider what they are doing to be gambling.
“We wanted some real data to show how players themselves actually view these operations,” AGA Vice President of Government Relations Tres York told COMPLETE iGAMING. “And partly that is because the the actual sweeps operators themselves have been going around saying that the that the actual value on their platforms is gold coins, and that 90% of their players, they almost always play with gold coins, all this type of stuff, which, for anyone who is thinking reasonably, is pretty much nonsense.
“If you give people online casino games and give them two different types of coins, one that one they can win money with and the other they can’t, what do you think people are going to play with? The coins that they can win money with.”
According to Sensor Tower data compiled for the AGA June 11-24, among a sample of 2,250 real money icasino, free-to-play mobile casino, and sweepstakes casino players, sweepstakes are considered gambling by most respondents. The margin of error was +/- 3.6% among the three key audiences.
Findings from the survey include:
- 69% describe sweepstakes casinos as places to wager real money.
- 80% of sweepstakes players spend money monthly, and nearly half spend weekly, without the safety nets offered by regulated operators.
- The number of monthly sweepstakes casino players is twice as high in states lacking sweepstakes bans.
York said the number of players who consider playing sweepstakes games to be gambling was not startling. When a player engages with a site to play blackjack, slots or any another casino game in “sweeps mode” and thus can cash out “that is basically the very definition of gambling,” York said.
“While 90% does on paper seems to be high, it doesn’t really surprise me. Because, contrary to what the proponents of sweeps say, the entire sweepstakes model as a whole is, in my view, a little too clever by halfway of just offering real money gambling, but trying to do so in a way that they don’t have to comply with state gambling laws in places where they otherwise wouldn’t be able to that, such as California and Texas.”
The spread of sweepstakes seems to have promulgated an increase of ads for the sites. According to a report that York viewed, a single operator spent more than $400 million on advertising in the United States.
“We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising targeting people all across the country,” York said. “You really can’t escape it.”
The placement of the ads also is a concern.
“Most of the legal operators are pretty well balanced in the types of forums that they’re essentially advertising on,” York said. “And then when you actually look at the ad spend for sweeps platforms, it is overwhelmingly on YouTube, with Reddit being a farther away second. And it’s just kind of the complete opposite of how legal operators do it.”
Jurisdictions have begun to crack down on illegal sites. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and especially Michigan (“they’re doing an absolutely phenomenal job”) are among the states trying to shut down black market and offshore sweepstakes.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a red earth, red state, blue state, purple state, green state,” York said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s something that kind of spans the divide, and people are taking it very seriously.”
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