Best South Dakota sweepstakes casinos in 2025

1. The gambling definition already pulls the model inside SDCL 22-25-1

SDCL 22-25-1 doesn’t use fancy language. It simply states that you cannot “engage in gambling in any form” unless another law permits it. When you examine what counts as gambling under that framework, three elements appear every time.

• you put something of value at risk,
• you face a chance-based outcome,
• and the result can turn into a prize with value.

Now, consider how sweepstakes casinos work in light of these elements. You buy a coin package. This purchase unlocks sweepstakes entries. These entries activate games like sweepstakes slots, and the outcomes can be redeemed for cash.

Once you map each step to the statute, it becomes clear why the state never needed a special “sweepstakes” category. The mechanics already satisfy the definition.

Since South Dakota never authorized online, casino-style gaming anywhere else in the code, the entire setup is illegal without the need for new legislation.

2. The internet gambling statutes close the rest of the gap

South Dakota has been addressing online gambling long before sweepstakes casinos started appearing. Back in 2000, the state instituted SDCL 22-25A-7 and 22-25A-8. And these two statues work together.

• Section 22-25A-7 of the South Dakota Codified Laws makes it unlawful for a gambling business to accept a bet placed over the Internet.
• Section 22-25A-8 forbids the establishment of any place, system, or operation used to conduct online gambling.

These statutes focus on how the gambling activity functions. If a platform accepts your paid entries through an online system and provides prize outcomes in the same manner, South Dakota considers the entire transaction to be an internet wager.

Since this type of activity has been illegal since 2000, sweepstakes casinos fall under an existing legal framework.

3. When South Dakota made its position regarding sweepstakes casinos public

For a pretty long time, South Dakota officials kind of kept us in the dark. The whole thing was pretty vague about how they felt about sweepstakes casinos being legal or not.

That silence lasted until August 2025, when the South Dakota Gaming Commission published a statewide alert. In that alert, the Commission suddenly followed a very easy-to-understand approach:

Online casino gaming is not legal in South Dakota. (South Dakota Commission on Gaming, 2025 PSA)

Once that sentence came out in an official notice, the discussion about sweepstakes casinos in South Dakota stopped being up in the air. The regulators put the pieces together that we all had been trying to figure out on our own.

In the next section, we’ll take a closer look at what they said exactly.