Massachusetts Lottery Executive Director Mark William Bracken has confirmed that the Massachusetts Lottery will not be taking its traditional holiday advertisement slots this year as “the cost of advertising has increased.”
Usually, the Massachusetts Lottery runs a television commercial each year. However, this will not be the case in 2023, with Bracken highlighting the impact of sports betting, saying, “The sports betting market has kind of just raised the bar and the amount of money that’s being spent. So it adversely affects all other advertisers, because the costs for products go up”.
Not only has the cost of advertising increased, but funding for Massachusetts Lottery advertisements has been cut significantly for decades. For example, the Lottery had a $11.8 million budget for advertising in 1994. In 2023, it was only allocated $5 million despite the increased competition from legal online gambling options.
Massachusetts legalized Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) and online sports betting in August 2022. Both gambling verticals have taken potential sales from the Lottery, with the state bringing in a betting handle of over $567 million in October 2023.
All of this comes despite strong performances from the Massachusetts Lottery in sales in October 2023 compared to October 2022, with a 7.8% increase. Big wins in the month saw profits drop from $90.8 million in October 2022 to $82.7 million in 2023.
The Treasurer of the Massachusetts Lottery, Deborah Goldberg, has advocated for the Lottery to allow online products to increase revenue and budgets across the board. SB 170 was introduced in the 2023 legislative session by Senator Paul Feeney based on Goldberg’s inputs, but the bill didn’t make much progress.
A holiday TV slot commercial is not the only loss for the Massachusetts Lottery this year, with the organization also giving up its “presenting sponsor” title of the annual Heroes Among Us awards held by the NBA’s Boston Celtics. This is a position the Lottery has held since 2011.
Commenting on the end of this partnership, Bracken said, “Boston Celtics close to tripled that sponsorship this year, and we could no longer afford it because they know they can get a sports betting company to come in and pay triple what we were paying,” Bracken said. “So we’re being pushed out of the market in many, many ways.”
