At the moment, sweepstakes casinos continue to operate in North Dakota, because nothing on the books explicitly bans them. But, believe us, that can shift very quickly. A statement from the Attorney General, a press release from the Governor, or a memo from the Gaming Division is all it takes to change the legal stance.
The crazy part here is that: A ban could be introduced very quickly, because, technically, regulators don’t need a new law to crack down on sweepstakes casinos. They could simply amend their interpretation of existing gambling legislation to include the sweepstakes model.
And this is not just some lame theory. This is how it works. Two (out of many) examples where this basically happened: South Dakota didn’t pass a law on sweepstakes, either. But, as soon as the Commission ruled that online casino gaming was illegal, that was it. Sites started dropping. And a similar thing happened in Minnesota, in this case it was the Department of Public Safety which had enough of them. And ater just a couple of cease-and-desist letters, the major players (LuckyLand Slots, Chumba, and so on) began to disappear from the market.