Zula, Sportzino Excluded States: 10 Can Play, Not Cash Out

Zula Casino and Sportzino each publish two state maps that do not agree. Their eligibility documents let residents of ten states register and play - Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee - and their Sweepstakes Rules say residents of those same ten states are not eligible to redeem Sweeps Coins at all. The ten are identical for both brands, and we read all six documents on September 9, 2026.

Eight of the ten are states we treat as having banned sweepstakes play outright: Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee. Only Delaware and Illinois are not. That pattern is the likeliest reading of what has happened, and it is worth saying so rather than presenting the contradiction as a mystery: the Sweepstakes Rules track the 2026 ban wave, and the registration documents were left on a five-state list that predates it. Zula's Terms were last edited on July 31, 2026 and still name five. What neither operator says is which document a player is supposed to follow.

This is a documents finding, not a test of the doors. We cannot sit in Hartford or Trenton and try to open an account, and on-screen behaviour is not what a PDF governs. What we can say is what the operators' own current paperwork says, and it says two different things.

Where are Zula's and Sportzino's sweepstakes rules?

Not on the pages you would look on, which is why nobody could read them until now. Both brands sit behind Cloudflare: zulacasino.com/terms-of-use, sportzino.com/sweeps-rules and every neighbouring HTML path return HTTP 403 to us, which is why our own Zula Casino review has carried the line "treat any longer list as directional until verified against Zula's own terms page."

The rulebooks are PDFs served from an API path, /api/Document/ContentPage/<name>.pdf, and that path answers 200 with the real file. An invented document name on the same path returns a 161-byte 404, so the endpoint is discriminating rather than serving one blanket response. Every file we pulled carries its own brand name, version number and publication date inside it.

That closes a hole we have flagged for a month. It also opens four more brands, because the same route works across the group.

What do Zula's and Sportzino's documents actually say?

Take Zula first. Its Terms and Conditions, Version 2.4 dated July 31, 2026, define the excluded states at clause 1.1.6: "'Excluded Territory' means the states of Washington, Idaho, California, New York, and Michigan in the United States and any other jurisdiction outside of the United States." Five states. The Participant Eligibility Requirements, Version 1.5 dated June 24, 2026, agree word for word: "Current Permitted Territories are all U.S. states (including the District of Columbia) except Washington state, Idaho, New York, California and Michigan."

Now the Sweepstakes Rules, Version 2.6 dated August 28, 2026, the newest document of the three. Clause 1.1.8 reads: "The Sweepstakes Permitted Territory includes the United States (other than the states of Idaho, Michigan, Delaware, New York, Washington, Nevada, California, Louisiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, and Montana)."

Fifteen states. Clause 5.12 is the sentence that gives that list teeth: "If you are not from a Sweepstakes Permitted Territory and have won and/or accumulated Sweeps Coins, you will not be eligible for redemption of Sweeps Coins."

Sportzino runs the same shape with one extra state, and the state row our Sportzino review carries is one of the rows this changes. Its Terms, Version 2.2 dated June 24, 2026, name six at clause 1.1.6 - Washington, Idaho, California, New York, Georgia and Michigan - and then repeat a truncated older version of the same sentence naming only four, an editing leftover the operator has not cleaned up. Its Sweepstakes Rules, Version 2.4 dated August 12, 2026, exclude sixteen, and one of them carries its own commencement date in brackets: "Louisiana (Effective from July 24, 2026)."

Which other brands use the same rulebook?

Six that we could read, on one document template. Zula runs through SCPS LLC and Sportzino through SSPS LLC, both at 1201 North Market Street in Wilmington, Delaware, and both part of the group our Blazesoft operator profile covers. The same API route also serves Yay Casino (Social Gaming LLC), and WinBonanza, American Luck and Reel Zappy (all SGSE LLC).

Every one of those six carries that redemption bar word for word - numbered 5.12 at Zula, Sportzino, WinBonanza and Reel Zappy, and 5.13 at Yay Casino and American Luck - along with the same 9,550 SC daily redemption ceiling and the same 4,900 SC Florida cap. Their arbitration opt-out notices all go to the same street address in Thornhill, Ontario, at six different PO box numbers.

All six have a mismatch, and two of the other four have exactly the gap Zula and Sportzino have. Yay Casino and American Luck both exclude five states in their eligibility documents and fifteen in their rules, and the ten in between are the same ten. WinBonanza's eligibility document is one state short of its rules, missing only Tennessee. Reel Zappy runs the gap backwards, excluding Iowa and Mississippi at signup that its own rules would permit, and its terms have a beta clause reserving the right to void winnings on top of that. Only the size and the direction differ; nobody in the set has two documents that match.

Fortune Wins, the third brand on our ranked list from this group, is the control that proves the point. Its rules are readable as ordinary HTML, we already carry its 15-state exclusion list, and it is the same 15 states Zula's Sweepstakes Rules name. The sister brand whose paperwork we could read has been telling us the answer for the other two all along.

Is our own data wrong because of this?

Yes, and we are saying so before anybody asks. Our database carries Zula's exclusions as three core states plus New York and California restricted, and Sportzino's as five. Those figures came from the documents we could reach, and the Sweepstakes Rules were not among them.

Measured against Zula's Version 2.6 rules, our row is missing Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee. Sportzino's row already carries Nevada, so its gap is the other nine of those states plus New York: ten again, a different ten. That field also drives which visitors see a clickout, so until it is corrected our pages can show these two brands to readers whose Sweeps Coins the operator's own rules say it will not redeem. The correction is queued rather than made in this article, because that field feeds scoring and geo-gating and is not a news desk's to edit mid-run.

One page states it in words rather than in data. Our Delaware legality page names Zula Casino and Sportzino among the handful of brands that "show no Delaware exclusion in their own terms right now", and says so on the explicit basis that their current state documents could not be retrieved. They can be retrieved now, and both name Delaware. That line is wrong as it stands and is queued with the rest. Our August count of which sweepstakes casinos still issue Sweeps Coins in Delaware left both brands out of its tables altogether, on the stated ground that their documents could not be read; those documents read now, and they exclude Delaware.

One thing the rules do confirm rather than contradict: our Zula review told readers to treat Illinois as excluded pending confirmation after the state's cease-and-desist wave and the group's Illinois pull-out. Version 2.6 confirms it in the operator's own words.

What should you do if you play at either brand?

If you live in one of the ten states, assume the Sweepstakes Rules govern the money. They are the newest document of the three at both brands, they are the document that defines redemption, and clause 5.12 is written as a flat bar rather than a discretion.

Save a copy of the version you agreed to, with its number and date, on the day you agree to it. State lists move here without any announcement, and the only reason we can prove it is that Zula's Terms carry a dated change log. It records "June 24, 2026: We added the State of California and New York under Section 1.1.6 'Excluded Territory'", and a January 10, 2024 entry adding Michigan before that. The Sweepstakes Rules, the document that actually decides whether you get paid, carry no change log at all, so there is no way to see from outside when a state joined that fifteen-name list.

Then check the floor before the ceiling. Fifty Sweeps Coins is a low minimum by category standards, and our guide to cashing out Sweeps Coins sets out what the realistic waits look like once verification is in the way. If the state question is what worries you, what the sweepstakes carve-out actually allows explains why eligibility is the operator's call, how we check operator documents is the method behind this piece, and the brands whose paperwork we can follow are the ones we rank.

Sources & documents

• Zula Casino Sweepstakes Rules, Version 2.6, August 28, 2026 (PDF)
• Zula Casino Terms & Conditions, Version 2.4, July 31, 2026 (PDF)
• Zula Casino Participant Eligibility Requirements, Version 1.5, June 24, 2026 (PDF)
• Sportzino Sweepstakes Rules, Version 2.4, August 12, 2026 (PDF)
• Sportzino Terms & Conditions, Version 2.2, June 24, 2026 (PDF)
• Sportzino Participant Eligibility Requirements, Version 1.3, June 24, 2026 (PDF)
• Yay Casino Sweepstakes Rules, Version 2.1, August 20, 2026 (PDF)
• Yay Casino Participant Eligibility Requirements, Version 1.5 (PDF)
• WinBonanza Sweepstakes Rules, Version 1.2 (PDF)
• WinBonanza Participant Eligibility Requirements, Version 1.1 (PDF)
• American Luck Sweepstakes Rules, Version 1.6, September 2, 2026 (PDF)
• American Luck Participant Eligibility Requirements, Version 1.2 (PDF)
• Reel Zappy Sweepstakes Rules, Version 1.2, September 1, 2026 (PDF)

All thirteen files were downloaded on September 9, 2026 and every quotation above is verbatim from them, including Sportzino's duplicated clause 1.1.6 sentence. Each file returned a distinct checksum and each names its own brand internally; a nonsense document name on the same API path returns a 161-byte HTTP 404, so these are not one repeated stand-in response. We could not read Fortune Wins through this route - its API path returns HTTP 500 - and the Fortune Wins figures above come from its ordinary HTML sweeps-rules page, which we already monitor. Nothing here has been tested from inside any of the ten states, and this article does not allege that either operator has broken any law.

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