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For These Retirees, Sweepstakes Are More Than Just a Game
Older adults are winning big prizes — and having fun — as ‘sweepers’ who enter multiple contests every day
By Eric Spitznagel
Published April 28, 2025
Every month, Judy Bailey, 71, gets together with six of her girlfriends from The Villages, a retirement community in central Florida. They usually meet at the local Chili’s — the only place in town that’ll let them stick around for two hours or more. They’ll settle into their favorite booth near the front, order chips and salsa to share, and enjoy a long afternoon discussing their favorite pastime: sweepstakes.
These are not casual players. These “sweepers,” as they refer to themselves, take their hobby very seriously. Bailey says she enters an average of 15 to 20 sweepstakes per day. “And those are just social media sweepstakes,” she says, like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok. “Once you start entering on the social sites and the algorithm notices, your feed will change, and you'll see lots of sweepstakes appear,” Bailey explains. She also finds sweepstakes in newsletters like SweepSheet, Sweeping America and iWINContests.
Over the years she’s won an impressive array of prizes, like trips to Mexico and Jamaica, thousands of dollars in gift cards, tickets to the Miami Dolphins games, a home brewing kit, a vacuum cleaner, slow cookers, necklaces, a 12-pound smoked turkey, a World Cup soccer ball, a 70-inch 4K television, a Princess Cruises trip worth $5,000, and 750 bottles of water.
The rise (and risks) of senior sweepers
Sweepstakes have been around since the 1950s, when marketing companies started to use contests to raise brand awareness. The Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, launched in 1967, made millions of Americans believe that they “may already be a winner!” But in recent decades, sweepstakes have spawned a subculture, especially among retirees over 50. Of the 55 million Americans estimated to enter sweepstakes every year, 48 percent of them are between the ages of 50 and 64 — more than any other age demographic, according to a 2024 report from Snipp Interactive, a global digital marketing company. They tend to be female (52 percent) and high-income (36 percent).
But they’re also more likely to become victims. An October 2024 report from the Federal Trade Commission found that people over 60 were nearly three times as likely to report a loss on a prize, sweepstakes or lottery scam. Even sweepstakes that seem legit might have nefarious intentions.
There’s no “I” in “Sweepers”
This is part of the reason that people like Bailey are increasingly playing together. During their meetups, they exchange not only details about sweepstakes but also strategies and warnings about suspicious-looking offers.
“We talk about everything from how many times they entered to anything special they did to give themselves an edge within the rules,” she says. “There are lots of tips and tricks that we share with each other.” Like focusing on sweepstakes from larger companies that offer more than one prize, which “improves your chances of winning,” according to Bailey. (See below for more sweepstake secrets from Bailey and others.)
And they’re not alone. From coast to coast, groups with names like the Palm Beach Prize Pirates, Big Apple Sweepers, the Badger Winners and the Tampa Bay Sweepaneers gather to share resources, cheer each other on and sometimes talk trash.
“We’re very competitive,” says Bailey. “We definitely try to help each other, but at the end of the day, we want to win. That’s just in our nature.” She points out that not only does everyone in the Village Sweepers play golf, every member has had at least one hole-in-one. “I have two holes-in-one,” she adds. “So we’ve all got competitive personalities. That’s a big part of why we love this.”
On the other side of the country, in California, Steve d’Adolf, 81, shares that competitive spirit. A resident of the Casa de las Campanas retirement community in San Diego since 2018, where he lives with his wife Patricia, 80. The retired electronic engineer spends an average of seven hours a day entering sweepstakes, both online and by mail. Over the past 45 years, d’Adolf claims, he’s won a ride on the Goodyear Blimp, tickets to four Super Bowls, and meet-and-greets with celebrities like Britney Spears, Carrie Underwood, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, and Michael Bublé, among other prizes.
“It still gives me an endorphin rush,” says d’Adolf. “I love going down in the morning to meet up with my 8 o'clock breakfast crew and be able to tell them, ‘Hey, look what I won yesterday.’”
The hardest part can be waiting to find out if he’s won. “There’s a funny joke we have in the hobby” d'Adolf says. “How do you know you are addicted to sweepstakes? The answer: When you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and you stop at your computer along the way to see if you have won something.”
He’s organized an informal gathering of fellow sweepers at Casa de las Campanas who go by the name San Diego Sweepers, which has around a dozen members. He also gives free seminars to other seniors interested in exploring the hobby, “just to show them how it’s done,” he says. “Which can be both good and bad. If you share information with other people, they’ll share right back with you. It’s a great way to learn about where to find more sweepstakes. But on the other hand, if you share too much, you ruin your odds.”
Despite his competitive thinking, d’Adolf can still be generous with his prizes. After winning a year’s supply of microwave popcorn, he donated it to his retirement community for movie nights. “I did the same thing when I won 52 packages of Lay’s potato chips,” he says. “I don’t need that much junk food, especially when I’m trying to lose weight!”
Last year he won a mariachi band rental and shared it with his fellow retirees for a 2024 Cinco de Mayo party. “I certainly didn’t need a mariachi band to play just for me,” he says.
Chasing the adrenaline rush
Sweepers all have different reasons for getting into the hobby. Many started long before they retired, including d’Adolf, who was just looking for a diversion during long work trips. “I was on the road a lot, working for various electronics companies,” he says. “I spent a lot of time on business flights or alone at hotels. I needed something to occupy my mind.”
For Carolyn Fenzl, 51, a retiree in Boise, Idaho, who writes and self-publishes romantic mysteries, she became hooked after winning her first sweepstakes. “I got free tickets to Disneyland,” she says. “You get this adrenaline rush and you’re like, ‘Well, maybe I could do it again.’”
Fenzl now enters roughly a hundred sweepstakes every day, which she insists isn’t as time-consuming as it sounds. “I have a system down, so I can almost do it without thinking,” she says. It involves creating a spreadsheet with sweepstake links, including ending dates, so she can quickly click each link to fill out the entry forms. “Some people use bookmarks to organize their sweepstakes,” she says. “Others might use tools offered on the aggregate site’s page to save and organize their sweepstakes. Streamlining your process is just practice over time and finding out what works best for you.”
Fenzl doesn’t go through all the trouble just for the prizes. “It brings a little excitement to every day, even if I don’t end up winning anything,” she says. She also cofounded a local sweeping group, the Prize-Winning Spuds, which meets regularly to share tips and discuss their favorite sweepstakes. “The camaraderie and friendship has meant so much to me,” she says.
Bailey got her first taste of sweeping as a child growing up near Jackson, Michigan. “When I was 10 or 11 years old, they had call-in contests on the radio and you could win things like a dozen donuts from the Dunkin Donuts,” she says. “I’d do that all the time. In fact, I won so many times on WKHM that they had to make new rules. They changed it so you could only win every six weeks.”
She officially caught the sweepstakes bug 50 years ago, when the 21-year-old newlywed was on her way to buy a refrigerator with her husband. “There was a sweepstakes set up in the middle of the mall, and they were giving away a refrigerator full of food,” Bailey recalls. “I stopped to fill it out and my husband was like, ‘No, no, we don’t have time for this.’ But I did it anyway, and when we came back later, they announced me as the winner. My husband nearly lost his mind. He was telling everybody in the mall, ‘My wife just won that! Can you believe it?’ He was so excited.”
How to see the world without spending a dime
Today, Bailey says she plays sweepstakes every day not necessarily for the prizes — though her husband would love for her to win a new fridge, she jokes — but because it keeps her brain active. “I worked in aerospace defense my whole life, for the Air Force and defense contractors, and I was always on the computer doing graphics and word processing,” she says. “I didn’t want to lose those skills when I retired in 2008. But more than that, I didn’t want my brain to check out on me.”
Filling out entry forms for sweepstakes keeps her mind sharp, Bailey believes. And she’s definitely onto something. Engaging your brain by learning new things and picking up new skills — the more challenging, the better — is one of the six pillars of brain health.
She also doesn’t get easily frustrated when she isn’t winning big. That’s what keeps many people away, including her own husband. “He’s one of these people that if he doesn’t win something huge the first time he enters, he gives up,” Bailey says. “But you can’t be like that with sweepstakes. You have to be happy for any prize, whether it’s a beer koozie, a $50 ticket outlet gift card, or an all-expenses-paid trip to Aruba.”
This may be true, but ask any sweeper about their favorite sweepstakes prizes and they’ll invariably mention the vacations. D’Adolf says he’s won 308 trips over the last 40 years, and the ones that stay with him offered more than just free plane fare and hotel rooms. “I love going someplace and learning something new,” he says. “I won a trip from a company that makes refrigerated dough, and they sent me to Vienna for a week to learn how to make Viennese pastry. I also won a sweepstakes from a high-end vodka company, who sent me to Rotterdam to learn how they make vodka.”
Fenzl, who’s traveled to London, L.A., Phoenix, Texas and San Francisco thanks to her wins, says her sweepstakes “white whale” is a free trip to Alaska. “It’s my dream to see puffins in the wild,” she says. “I’ll keep playing till it happens.” Does that mean she’ll retire from sweepstakes the moment she wins an Alaska trip? “Probably not,” she says, smiling with a broad grin.
It’s a sentiment shared by many sweepers: The prizes are what make it exciting, but the ultimate goal isn’t always to get the most stuff. It’s the excuse to get together with friends, to keep your neurons firing, and, especially for retirees, to find a (new) sense of purpose
“My wife calls it my addiction,” says d’Adolf. “She’s probably right. But it could be worse. Other people are addicted to things that’ll probably end up killing them. I’m just addicted to sweepstakes.”
While some people have trophy cases to show off everything they’ve accomplished in their life, d’Adolf only has to walk around his house to be reminded of what decades of sweeping have brought him. “Every electronic device, my TV and stereo system, a lot of the furniture, it all came from sweepstakes,” he says. “It’s fun to be able to see the sweat of your labor. I can say, ‘Yeah, I did that. I earned it all. I didn’t pay for it, but I earned it.’ That’s a nice feeling.”
A Beginner’s Guide to Sweepstakes
Thinking about entering sweepstakes but not sure where to start? These tips from longtime sweepers will help you dip your toes into the hobby.
1. Do your homework
Sweeping is easier than ever, now that “99.5 percent of all sweepstakes are online,” says d’Adolf. “In the past, you had to drive around to different supermarkets and look for these entry forms, or you had to go to the post office and buy stamps, and then you had to go back again and mail the letters. All of that is gone.”
But while you can enter in the privacy of your home, you still have to find the sweepstakes. Bailey and other sweepers recommend doing research at well-established sites like Sweepstakes Advantage, Contestgirl, Online Sweepstakes and Sweepstakes Fanatics, all of which list hundreds of legitimate sweepstakes as well as info on entry frequency and prize type.
2. Be consistent
The biggest mistake made by novices, according to Fenzl, is giving up too quickly. “They don’t get a big prize right away, so they just stop doing it,” she says. “Consistency is key. You can’t just enter a sweepstakes every now and then when you remember it. Make it a regular part of your routine.” This is especially important for sweepstakes that allow you to enter every day. “Doing it once isn’t enough,” Fenzl says. “If you enter it every day, you’re going to increase your odds of winning.”
3. Use a separate email
“I never use my normal email for entering sweepstakes,” says Bailey. “If you do, your inbox is just going to be flooded with junk mail.” She suggests creating a new account with a strong password that’s devoted solely to your sweepstakes hobby. “It’s just safer that way, and you can always delete it if the email ever gets compromised.”
4. Multitask
Once you’ve entered enough sweepstakes, it’ll start to become second nature, says d’Adolf. So don’t devote your free time to filling out form after form after form. “Sweepstakes are great for multitasking,” he says. “You can fill them out while watching TV or sitting on a plane. Any time I’d take a flight, I’d always be filling out entries at my seat. By the time we’d land, I’d have hundreds of entries ready to go.”
5. Beware of scams
Scammers are rampant in sweepstakes, warns Fenzl, and they’re especially eager to target seniors. “The main thing they try to do is trick you into giving your credit card information,” she says. “If it's a legitimate prize, there's no purchase necessary.” For more tips, check out AARP’s complete guide to identifying and avoiding sweepstakes scams.
6. Keep it local
Although d’Adolf enjoys entering national sweepstakes, he tends to focus on the ones that he calls “restricted.” These local sweepstakes “aren’t open to everyone, so your odds are much better,” he says. Local sweepstakes can be restricted to regular customers, subscribers, or even certain area codes. “For example, there’s a grocery chain in Southern California called Stater Bros., and they have sweepstakes all year long, but you need to be a California resident to enter.”
By contrast, a national sweepstakes like Publishers Clearing House has “odds that are worse than Powerball,” he says. “They list the odds on their site, and for the big one, your chance of winning is one in 6.7 billion. Is that really worth your time and effort?”
Eric Spitznagel is a features writer for AARP Members Edition. He was also a cofounding editor of The Arrow, AARP’s newsletter for Gen X men.
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