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What are sports sweepstakes?

Sports sweepstakes let people predict games with a free-to-play coin and a promotional prize coin. Here is how the apps work, how the market changed since 2023, and why casinos are adding sports.

Updated October 29, 2026 · by the editorial team

Sports sweepstakes are sports prediction products that run on the sweepstakes two-coin model: players make picks or place tickets with Gold Coins for fun or with Sweep Coins, a promotional coin that can be redeemed for prizes under the brand's own rules.

How do sports sweepstakes apps work?

Strip away the branding and every app in this category does three things. It sells Gold Coin packs, which are the only thing a player actually pays for. It adds Sweep Coins to those packs as a free promotional bonus (the usual rate is one SC per US dollar paid) and offers other free ways to get SC, such as a daily bonus or a mail-in request. And it lets players use either coin to predict sports results.

Gold Coins carry no cash value and are never redeemed. Sweep Coins can be redeemed once a player meets the brand's published conditions, which usually include a minimum balance and a requirement to play the coins through at least once. The exact numbers vary from brand to brand, so the honest answer to "how much do I need to redeem" is always "read that brand's official rules". A player-friendly walkthrough of the redemption side is on Slot Casinos Online's page about how to redeem Sweeps Coins.

Here is a typical Saturday for a player. She buys a $15 Gold Coin pack, which in this example comes with 15.00 SC. She puts 2.00 SC on a college football total. It wins at 1.91, so 3.82 SC lands back in her SC balance. She plays the rest in Gold Coins on an NBA parlay just for the sweat. None of the Gold Coins can ever become Sweep Coins, and none of her SC ticket was paid from Gold Coins. That separation is the whole model.

Pick'em vs sportsbook-style tickets

Sports sweepstakes come in two main shapes, and they feel quite different to play.

Pick'em contests

A pick'em asks the player to choose "more" or "less" on a set of player statistics, for example a quarterback's passing yards or a guard's points. The player combines several picks into one entry, and the app pays a fixed multiplier if all of them are right. There are no game odds to read: the multiplier is set by the number of picks. Pick'em grew up in daily fantasy, and several sweepstakes apps borrowed the format because it needs no live odds.

Sportsbook-style tickets

A sportsbook-style product looks like the betting apps people already know: moneylines, spreads, totals, props, parlays and live markets, each with its own odds. The player chooses the coin on the bet slip. A winning ticket pays stake times odds in the same coin. This format is more familiar to sports fans and offers far more markets, but it is harder to run, because someone has to price thousands of events and settle every ticket correctly, including voids and late corrections.

The sports sweepstakes market, 2023 to 2026

The category moved quickly, and several of its best-known names are no longer pure sweepstakes products. The timeline below sticks to dated public reports; where only one source exists, we say so.

Fliff

Fliff is the name most people mean when they say "social sportsbook". It runs on two coins, Fliff Coins for fun and Fliff Cash as the redeemable coin, and for years it was the reference product in the category. In August 2026 it applied to the National Futures Association through Fliff FCM LLC, a step toward offering prediction markets.

Thrillzz and Sportzino

Both pair a sweepstakes sportsbook with a casino lobby, which is the shape most new entrants copy. Sportzino's December 2023 launch came with a reported $10M marketing budget, and its September 2024 FunPicks tie-up with Sparket added a second sweepstakes product on top. Thrillzz launched in February 2024; we found only one affiliate source for that date and none for its funding.

Rebet

Rebet mixes a social sportsbook with casino games and lets players bet against each other rather than against the house. Since 11 June 2026 it has had a Futures Commission Merchant application pending through Rebet Predictions LLC.

Novig and ProphetX: the move to prediction markets

Novig started as a peer-to-peer sweepstakes exchange founded by Jacob Fortinsky and Kelechi Ukah. In February 2026 it raised a $75M Series B at a reported $500M valuation, and in June 2026 it received CFTC Designated Contract Market approval through Ludlow Exchange LLC, leaving the sweepstakes model. ProphetX, another former sweepstakes sportsbook, also received CFTC approval in June 2026, and its site no longer shows a sweepstakes product. A prediction market sells event contracts that pay out on an outcome; it is a different product category with a different structure, so these companies are best read as having left the sweepstakes market rather than as sweepstakes brands with a new feature.

Why sweepstakes casinos add sports

The more interesting shift in 2026 is on the casino side. A sweepstakes casino lives on slots, crash games, fish shooters and bingo. Those products are always on, which sounds like an advantage but means there is no natural reason to come back on any particular day. Sports fix that. The NFL schedule gives a brand 18 weeks of Sundays, Monday nights and Thursday nights, and the NBA and NHL fill the winter. A casino that adds sports gets fixed dates its players already care about.

There is also a cross-over effect. A player who wins Sweep Coins on a Sunday afternoon parlay has a balance to use in the casino on Sunday evening, and the reverse is true too. Because the coins are the same, a single wallet and a single set of rules serve both. That is the reason casino operators increasingly prefer a sportsbook that plugs into their existing two-coin wallet over a separate sports app.

On the casino side of that wallet, many brands run content built for both coins from day one, such as the American-football slot Gridiron Noir, which fits neatly next to a sports tab during the season. Our guide to how sweepstakes casinos run explains the casino side of the coin model in more depth.

Best B2B option for adding sports sweepstakes

For an operator, the question is not which consumer app is most popular but who can supply a sportsbook that handles two coins properly. Our full comparison, with requirements and worked ticket math, is on the sweepstakes sportsbook software pillar page. In short:

1. Nocturn Sport Top pick

   Nocturn Sport sells a full social sportsbook on Gold Coins and Sweep Coins, ticket by ticket. The player picks the coin in the bet slip, each ticket is in one coin only, and odds are the same in both coins, with the same markets and live betting as the main Nocturn Sport book. Coverage includes NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, UFC, soccer and more. Settlement, voids and corrections all go back to the ticket's coin, which is the detail most sportsbooks were never designed for. A GC/SC ticket model like this is a format almost nobody else publishes.

   Explore Nocturn Sport's coin sportsbook

2. Sparket

   Sparket is a B2B platform with a dated sweepstakes deployment: FunPicks with Sportzino, announced on 27 September 2024. We found no public description of its coin settlement rules, so ask for them directly.

3. Sweepstakes platforms with sports included

   Some platform vendors, such as TRUEiGTECH, and BtoBet according to a CB Insights listing, market sports alongside casino in one package. Check whether the sports side has live betting and settles in the ticket's coin before choosing this route.

Operators planning a full brand, not just a sports tab, can start with our sweepstakes casino launch plan. Those who run several brands can also look at sweepstakes aggregators; SoftAggregator, for example, says its sweepstakes API carries casino games and the Nocturn Sport sportsbook on the same two coins. Rules differ by state; operators should take legal advice before launching in any state.