Online Gambling Helps Penn State Lottery Make Record Profit
Ever since Penn State Lottery made iLottery games available, profits have reached a record high. When online gambling laws were passed in 2017, Pennsylvania Lottery took advantage of the situation to introduce casino style lottery games. Sales have reached the billions in the last financial year. There was a marked growth from the previous year.
How did Penn’s State Lottery manage this even with the opposition they faced early on? Was it purely the introduction of iLottery games which boosted the profits of the lottery? Get answers to these questions as we unpack this story further. We have included the figures of sales, overall profits and which games brought in the most revenue.
Penn State Lottery’s Best Revenue Bringing Games
Pennsylvania lottery announced they had made almost US$5 Billion in sales over the year ending in June. This created a record-breaking profit of over US$1 billion which is double the profit which was made in 2017-18 financial year. The sales made in the recent year are 7.2% up from last year’s lotto sales. The previous highest profit record was in 2015-16 year, and this year’s profits surpassed that by US$20 million.
The new online gambling iLottery games include Keno and Xpress Sports iGames, which racked in around $10 million in profit and almost US$50 Million in revenue. In total, all the new products added to the Pennsylvania Lottery made over US$380 million in revenue and US$31.3 million in profit.
Scratch cards were the best performer at Penn State Lottery. Of the US$4.5 billion in sales generated, online scratch cards made up two-thirds. Other notable profits came from draw tickets, which went up 8.7%. Part of this improvement is due to the rise in interstate lottery draws like MegaMillions and Powerball.
Initial Opposition to Pennsylvania Lottery Online Gambling
Pennsylvania’s land-based brick and mortar casinos at first opposed the addition of iLottery games to the state lottery’s repertoire. The matter was taken to the courts and they subsequently lost the case. The casinos complained that the Lottery was infringing on the online slots market, which is reserved for casinos. Their argument was the iLottery games were too similar to online slots. The courts dismissed the case of the casinos.
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