What’s Actually Inside HB 591
HB 591 is pitched as a long-overdue update to deal with “modern gambling practices,” especially the stuff happening online. After a string of illegal gambling busts in the state, lawmakers decided the easiest fix wasn’t patchwork enforcement, it was rewriting the whole rulebook.
HB 591 doesn’t just tweak a clause or two. It reaches into almost every corner of Florida’s gambling code. It rewrites how slot-machine licenses work, reshapes the Florida Gaming Control Commission, stiffens criminal penalties, tightens rules around advertising, and lays out new offences for online gambling, illegal machine trafficking, and even renting property for gambling purposes. It also updates Florida’s RICO-style unlawful debt provisions so the new gambling crimes fit neatly into the enforcement grid.
It’s broad, it’s aggressive, and it’s designed to make gray-market models disappear.
However, some other forms of gambling remain untouched, including anything run by the Seminole Tribe. Here’s why
The Seminole Patch
HB 591 very deliberately doesn’t touch gambling offered under the Seminole Tribe’s compact, and this is because those operations sit under a long-standing agreement with the state. This agreement gives the tribe exclusivity over key products like online casino-style play and mobile sports betting in exchange for billions in revenue sharing.
So while the bill cracks down on everything from internet gambling to illegal machines, it spares tribal gaming under the compact, and other already authorized facilities (Paris-mutuel, licensed slots, etc.)
Everyone else is suddenly on much thinner ice.
The point of the overhaul isn’t to eliminate gambling, it’s to draw a hard line around what counts as legal under the Seminole framework and what doesn’t.
The Definitions That Change Everything
The core of HB 591 is a new definition of “internet gambling” and “internet sports wagering.” And this is where sweepstakes casinos get dragged straight into the current.
Under the new definitions, internet gambling covers any online game of chance that awards money, prizes, or anything with real-world value, especially if it looks like a slot machine, table game, or other casino format.
If it spins, deals, or pays out, it’s treated as gambling. For dual-currency sweeps casinos, where players buy Gold Coins but use Sweeps Coins to redeem prizes, the definition fits. Lawmakers don’t need to name them.
The definition already does the heavy lifting, and once you’re inside that definition, the consequences change.
Gambling Is Now a Felony
Players who take part in illegal internet gambling are looking at a misdemeanor. But anyone running or pushing it, including operators, affiliates, promoters, facilitators, advertisers, is staring at a third-degree felony.
That covers pretty much the whole sweeps ecosystem: the casinos themselves, their media partners, influencers, affiliate sites, payment processors, geolocation vendors, even loyalty and rewards apps.
Run it repeatedly or at scale and the stakes go up again, with some offences escalating to second-degree felonies, and slot-machine trafficking sitting in first-degree territory.
So if a sweeps operator decides to test Florida’s patience, the response isn’t a warning email. It’s a criminal case.
Florida Isn’t Just Going After Websites
HB 591 doesn’t stop at online, it’s also going after hardware and real-world side of gambling. Trafficking more than 15 slot machines or machine parts is upgraded to a first-degree felony with mandatory six-figure fines, and smaller batches climb into second-degree territory. Even lying about whether a gaming machine is legal is now a crime. Renting out property for illegal gambling goes from a warning to a felony.
Put next to the new internet-gambling rules, the picture is simple: Florida isn’t trying to manage grey-area models, it’s trying to wipe them out. And because dual-currency sweeps casinos now sit inside that definition of illegal internet gambling, the practical options in Florida are pretty limited.
Sweeps can either:
- strip the state down to Gold-Coin-only, or
- leave entirely.
Part of a Bigger Pattern
Florida isn’t the first state to go after sweeps in 2025:
New York banned dual-currency sweeps outright, while California passed its ban months earlier. States like Minnesota, West Virginia, Louisiana and Michigan have leaned on attorneys general to squeeze the model out with opinions and enforcement instead of neat labels.
Platforms have joined in too:
- Google Ads now says sweepstakes casinos are not social casinos.
- YouTube age-restricts sweeps content and treats skins/NFT betting as gambling.
- Meta’s internal leak showed illegal gambling and scams thriving in its ad system.
Rather than pass a clean “sweeps ban,” Florida rewrites what counts as internet gambling so broadly that sweepstakes casinos now fall into the category by default.
What Happens Next?
For now, HB 591 is the opening move.
What happens next is the part worth watching. Do sweeps brands quietly geoblock Florida? Do affiliates stop targeting the state? Does the industry fight back, or just treat this as the new cost of doing business in the U.S.?
One thing’s clear: the definition has changed. Now everyone else has to decide how, or if, they’re willing to fit inside it.
Blaise Luis
