Alea’s Sweepstakes Bet Pays Off Even as US States Rush to Ban It

Alea booked €30.7 million (about $33 million) in gross gaming revenue from its US sweepstakes business alone in the first quarter of 2026. The gaming content and platform supplier, active across North and Latin America, said the monthly run rate climbed near €13.4 million by April. Founder Alexandre Tomic shared those numbers during a presentation at the NEXT conference, then repeated them to Focus Gaming News on the sidelines of SBC Americas 2026.

Eight US states have now banned the licence-free structure that pushed those figures up so fast. Tomic still calls the sweepstakes vertical one that is here to stay.

Alea’s Numbers Put the US Neck and Neck With Brazil

Tomic laid out the figures during his NEXT talk, then expanded on them at SBC Americas 2026, the industry gathering that draws operators and suppliers from across North and Latin America.

“You only have to look at the numbers,” Tomic said. “The US has grown so quickly that, for us, it’s become just as important as Brazil, which is our biggest market.”

Sweepstakes now accounts for 50% of all activity on Alea’s platform, Tomic said. The vertical has let smaller studios scale unusually fast, too. Slot studio Booming Games grabbed roughly 10% of the market within two months last year, he said, a share that put it alongside Evolution, one of the industry’s largest live-casino suppliers.

Sweepstakes Gaming’s Licence-Free Playbook

The appeal for suppliers like Alea comes down to structure. Sweepstakes casinos run on two virtual currencies instead of real-money wagers, which keeps most of them outside state gambling licensing regimes entirely.

Operators don’t need a traditional gambling licence, which means they can enter markets that were previously closed to them.

Tomic said, describing the vertical’s core advantage over real-money gaming.

The mechanics rest on three legal building blocks:

• Gold Coins – a free virtual currency for entertainment play that can never be redeemed for cash or prizes.
• Sweeps Coins – earned through purchases, promotions or mail-in entry, and redeemable for real cash once a player is verified.
• No Purchase Necessary – the alternate entry method that keeps the games classified as promotional sweepstakes rather than wagering under federal law.

The structure has built a market some trackers now measure in double-digit billions. Eilers & Krejcik Gaming pegged the sector’s gross gaming revenue at roughly $3.1 billion in 2022 and projected $11 billion for 2025. KPMG’s range for 2026 runs from $4.6 billion to $14.3 billion.

Regulated commercial casinos are not shrinking either. American Gaming Association (AGA) figures show commercial gaming revenue reaching $20.09 billion in the first quarter, up 6% from a year earlier.

Eight States Have Banned the Model Alea Is Betting On

Momentum reversed fast. The AGA counted five states, California, Connecticut, Montana, New Jersey and New York, that passed laws in 2025 explicitly banning sweepstakes platforms built to mimic online casinos or sportsbooks. By mid-July 2026, industry trackers put the total number of states with outright bans at eight, with Indiana and Maine the most recent additions.

More than 100 class action lawsuits are now active against sweepstakes operators nationwide, according to a Sweepedia analysis. Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto filed the first government civil case against the sector in August 2025, calling sweepstakes brand Stake.us a “rogue and real money gambling racket with destructive repercussions for its players.”

The consumer-protection argument has data behind it. A July 2025 AGA survey found that 90% of sweepstakes casino users considered the activity gambling, and 68% said they played mainly to win real money.

Suppliers and Banks Get Pulled Into the Fight

New York’s ban was the first written to reach past the operators themselves. Its statute extends liability to financial institutions, payment processors and geolocation providers that merely support a sweepstakes platform, and Virginia and Minnesota are drafting similar language.

California’s law reaches the same layer. The Los Angeles lawsuit against Stake.us named identity-verification vendor Veriff and game suppliers Pragmatic Play, Hacksaw Gaming and Evolution alongside the operator itself. Baltimore sued six more operators in March 2026, including VGW Holdings, the Australia-based parent of Chumba Casino and LuckyLand Slots, seeking discovery into vendor contracts and payment terms.

VGW’s own turmoil has compounded the pressure. Founder Laurence Escalante took the company private for $3.5 billion last year, then resigned within months and was arrested on burglary, assault and drug charges in Perth, Australia. VGW still posted about $4 billion in revenue in 2025.

Pragmatic Play pulled its content from the US sweepstakes market entirely in September 2025 after being named in the Los Angeles suit. Tribal gaming interests are split too. The California bill drew backing from the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, which sees sweepstakes platforms as encroaching on compact-protected exclusivity.

• American Gaming Association – argues sweepstakes platforms offer products functionally identical to licensed online casinos while paying no gaming taxes or funding responsible-gambling programs.
• Social and Promotional Games Association – countered that Montana’s law “criminalized everyday digital promotions with a law so broadly written it fails to name what it bans.”
• Smaller tribal operators – Big Lagoon Rancheria warned a ban would “eliminate business opportunities for various tribes” shut out of digital gaming.

None of those objections have reversed a ban once it passed.

Cultural Fit Built Alea’s Biggest Market

None of that regulatory turbulence touches Brazil, where Alea does its largest business and where online gaming is fully regulated. Tomic says the lesson from a decade in the region has little to do with language.

“People often think it comes down to sharing a language, but I don’t think that’s really the case,” Tomic said. “Brazil, our biggest market, speaks Portuguese, after all.”

The pattern Alea watches instead runs through Spain. “We often talk about Ibero-America because, over the years, we’ve seen the same pattern,” he said. “The Spanish companies that succeed in LatAm are usually the ones that have already proven themselves in Spain.”

“For me, it’s always been much more about cultural fit,” Tomic said. “That’s also why we invest heavily in local teams. I don’t think you can really understand a market like LatAm from the outside.”

That approach has to account for constant change. “The biggest challenge in Latin America is keeping up,” Tomic said. “Things change all the time, so you have to adapt.”

What Themes Dominated SBC Americas 2026?

Sweepstakes gaming, player-versus-player skill games and artificial intelligence were the three themes Tomic heard most often on the show floor. He described the event as a strong opener that quieted on day two, calling that pattern typical and the show a positive one overall for Alea.

“We had a very strong first day, and the second one was a little quieter, which is pretty normal for these events,” Tomic said.

“The main trends were sweepstakes, player-versus-player skill gaming, and AI,” he said. “I think we’ll continue hearing a lot more about all three over the coming months.”

“Overall, it was a good show,” Tomic said. “Maybe a little quieter than we expected, but still a very positive event for us.”

Half a dozen more states, including Florida, Ohio and Virginia, have active bills or task forces studying the same question that Montana, California and the rest have already answered. Maine’s ban took effect this week, one of eight states now closing the door on the exact model that produced Alea’s €30.7 million quarter.