Government-run lotteries, which helped fund construction of China’s Great Wall, now contend with far more than determining which tickets have a winning combination. But even when state lotteries compete with, and sometimes oversee, igaming, sports betting, and online gambling, one principle tops all others, Helene Keeley says.
“It’s all about the integrity of the game,” said Keeley, director of the Delaware Lottery. “Whether you’re in a casino, whether you’re buying scratch-off tickets or a Powerball ticket, everybody wants to feel safe that they’re buying that product.”
Keeley spoke at a GLI Regulators Seminar discussion titled “The Great Gaming Crossover,” presented in conjunction with the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States summer meeting at River Casino Pittsburgh. Also on the panel were Madison Mackenzie, associate attorney for the North Carolina State Lottery Commission, and May Scheve Reardon, former director of the Missouri Lottery and now vice president of government relations for lottery provider Pollard Banknote Limited. Angela Wong, vice president of global lottery solutions for GLI, moderated.
Unlike most lottery commissions, Delaware’s is both an operator and regulator, responsible for overseeing sports betting, three casinos, and igaming, in addition to running lottery games. “As we look at the possibility of adding more product to our (lottery) portfolio, how much more can we add before we’re actually competing against ourselves?” Keeley said. “I’m not going to have ilottery with casino-type games when I already have an igaming platform.”
Mackenzie said the North Carolina Lottery is adjusting to its expanded mission since becoming responsible for licensing and regulating the state’s newly legalized sports-betting industry in June 2023. With just the lottery, the commission operated as a business, focusing on generating revenue and sales, Mackenzie said. “We had to make some really intentional adjustments to accommodate that new function and make sure we were being mindful to not create conflicts of interest.”
Reardon said U.S. lotteries are a $113 billion-a-year industry, outperforming the country’s beer market, and warned against “couriers” who sell tickets secondhand. A December 2023 report by the Colorado state auditor’s office explained how couriers function. Players order tickets through a courier’s app or website, paying a service fee in addition to the ticket price. The courier service isn’t licensed, but it operates a licensed brick-and-mortar retail outlet that prints the ticket and sends it to the player electronically or by mail. The report said one courier’s outlet had more than 20 lottery terminals and could print up to 15,000 tickets an hour. That outlet sold more than five times as many tickets as the number-two seller, a traditional lottery retailer.
Reardon said couriers are “barely working” with lotteries. Their process “is not ironclad,” she added. “It’s going to be detrimental to the industry.”
Keeley said lotteries still need to provide online options while continuing to cater to the traditional methods of buying lottery products, whether scratch-offs or Powerball tickets. “A lot of states are already doing it, being respectful of that traditional buyer but gently pushing them more to the online.”
