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Florida attorney general sues Stake, VGW over sweepstakes casinos

Legal Writer

Publish Date: Aug 20, 2026

Fact checked by: Matt Moreno

Key Points

Lawsuits allege that games violate Florida’s consumer protection and gambling laws
Complaints also name payment processors as defendants
Lawsuit follows failed attempt to pass legislation explicitly banning sweepstakes casinos

The Florida legislature did not get clearer language restricting sweepstakes games into the state code in 2026, but Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier believes existing law gives him sufficient grounds to take enforcement action against two of the most successful companies in the sweepstakes casino industry. Stake and VGW are the main defendants in separate lawsuits that Uthmeier filed on Wednesday.

Both complaints allege that Stake’s and VGW’s casino-style online games that use a sweepstakes-based dual-currency system violate Florida’s consumer protection and gambling statutes. Given the state’s population and the increasingly narrower map for sweepstakes casinos in the U.S., this litigation could have a significant impact on companies still counting on revenue from those games.

tallahassee florida usa capitol building

Uthmeier heads to court to take on sweepstakes casino giants, VGW & Stake

Uthmeier stated that he filed the lawsuits in the Hillsborough County Circuit Court in an Aug. 19 press release. The statement says that the complaints “seek permanent injunctions prohibiting the defendants from operating or soliciting in Florida, forfeiture and recovery of money lost by Florida consumers, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil penalties under FDUTPA, restitution, and attorneys’ fees.”

FDUTPA (Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act) is the state’s consumer protection statute. Legal gambling is restricted to brick-and-mortar casinos that Seminole Gaming operates, Seminole Gaming’s Hard Rock Bet online sportsbook, and a handful of commercial off-track betting parlors in Florida.

The Stake lawsuit names marketing venture Kick Streaming and Breeze Labs Payments as co-defendants. The VGW complaint adds Trustly and WorldPay HoldCo to the defendants list.

Those actions make good on a threat that Uthmeier issued nearly two months prior.

Uthmeier sent demand letter to payment processors in June

Uthmeier shared letters that he sent to the companies behind major payment processors American Express, Mastercard, and Visa in June 2026. He ordered the recipients to stop facilitating payments from people in Florida to gambling websites that are not licensed in the state in that correspondence.

Uthmeier has not taken any enforcement action on that topic against any of the letter recipients to date. However, his lawsuits against Stake and VGW represent a follow-up of meetings that he said he was going to have with sweepstakes casino operators, although there is no publicly available evidence that Uthmeier met with or corresponded with Stake or VGW explicitly prior to filing the lawsuits.

While Breeze Labs Payments and WorldPay HoldCo do not have the footprint in the payment industry that Mastercard and Visa do, it’s still possible to consider these lawsuits an escalation of Uthmeier’s actions in the payments space. That escalation could further trim what is already a shrinking U.S. sweepstakes casino industry.

Florida is major viable market for sweepstakes casinos

With California and New York having already passed laws banning sweepstakes casino games, Florida is the second-most populous U.S. state that up until this time had taken no enforcement action against sweepstakes casino operators. Losing access to the state’s population would represent a significant reduction in the addressable market for the product.

Sweepstakes casinos avoided a similar issue earlier in 2026 when a bill that could have put more explicit ban language on the books in Florida failed to pass the state legislature. Proponents could try again in 2027 but Uthmeier’s lawsuits may convince them that doing so is unnecessary. Uthmeier is arguing that sweepstakes casinos violate existing statutes in Florida, and if the court agrees with him, the economics of operating such a website in the U.S. could further become a mere shadow of what they once were.

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