The Massachusetts Lottery again has demonstrated why it’s unquestionably this state’s most successful, sustainable revenue-generating machine.
Despite being handcuffed initially by a virus-deflated economy, the Lottery recently upgraded its fiscal year 2021 profit projection by $45 million, thanks to sales that continue to defy previously pessimistic assumptions formed earlier in the pandemic.
The Lottery said it now expects to provide $985 million in local aid this budget year by the time the fiscal year ends in June, up from initial projections of $940 million.
That would be about the same amount as the Lottery generated in fiscal 2020.
Then, despite sales that collapsed in March and April of last year as the pandemic closed many businesses and changed consumer habits, the Lottery racked up its third-best number in terms of fiscal-year revenue, and in the process generated a net profit of $986.9 million in aid for the state’s cities and towns.
And it could have been considerably more.
During the Lottery’s three worst months of this COVID crisis, the ability to sell Lottery products online would have generated between $70 million and $80 million in revenue, Treasurer Deb Goldberg told lawmakers this summer, an observation we also had previously espoused.
Goldberg has lobbied lawmakers consistently over the last several years for the ability to offer Lottery products online, to no avail.
To put this revised revenue estimate in context, that $45 million upgrade is greater than the expected amount of annual revenue the state would receive from any of the legalized sports betting proposals circulating in the Legislature.
Through the first seven months of fiscal year 2021, all of which were affected in some way by the pandemic-related limitations, the Lottery experienced a 4.5% increase in total sales and a 10.1% increase in net profit compared to the same seven months before the pandemic began, Executive Director Michael Sweeney said last week.
The only reason this fiscal year’s profit figures won’t exceed the prior amount can be attributed to the one important Lottery offering that did sustain significant pandemic damage.
Keno, most often played by customers seated inside bars and restaurants, usually accounts for about 20% of the Lottery’s overall sales. However, due to pandemic-related operating restrictions imposed on that industry, Keno has seen an 11.3% decline in sales so far this fiscal year.
And while lawmakers still remain indifferent or undecided about an online presence, the Lottery did take a digital footstep with its introduction of a mobile app that allows game players to scan tickets remotely.
And two months into its launch, more than 5,700 individuals have used the Lottery’s remote ticket scanning feature on its mobile app, checking more than 600,000 tickets to see if they’re winners.
And this app’s possibilities have just scratched the surface.
Lottery players will soon be able to claim prizes from $601 to $5,000 through the app, which will eliminate the inconvenience of traveling to a Lottery claims center. Net winnings would be wired directly to a bank account on file after deductions for any unpaid child support or tax obligations.
Using 2019 prize claim data as a base and assuming a 50% acceptance rate for the new mobile cashing app, the Lottery estimates it could eliminate more than 78,000 prize claim trips to Lottery locations and a corresponding 2.78 million mileage reduction.
And that’s not the only green this mobile-cashing app would generate. The Lottery also indicated it would also pre-empt the consumption of more than 110,000 gallons of gasoline and 983.1 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.
Perhaps the Lottery should be running the rocky vaccine rollout and the state’s overwhelmed unemployment-assistance agency.
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March 04, 2021 at 01:28PM
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Lottery’s dazzling figures show its COVID immunity - Lowell Sun
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