Issue affects every ticket sold

By Kate Northrop

The Hoosier Lottery suspended sales for its newest Fast Play game after players called in to report that their winning tickets were unable to be validated.

On the morning of the launch of Indiana's newest Fast Play game, $20 Golden Jackpot, players experienced a technical issue that prevented their supposedly winning tickets from being validated.

According to the Lottery, callers were stating that they matched all three numbers in one game and believed their ticket to be a winner after reviewing the "How to Win" section printed on the ticket. However, the tickets were not scanning as winners upon attempting to validate it for a prize either through the mobile app or at a retailer.

Players also contacted the Lottery on social media with complaints, and one retailer called in with the same concern.

The Golden Jackpot game launched on Sunday morning, March 20. By noontime EST, the Lottery had suspended sales for the one Fast Play game. Between the launch and suspension of sales, 632 tickets were sold.

All 632 tickets were affected by the same issue.

The Lottery announced in a press release yesterday that they are actively working with their vendor to determine the root cause of the problem. Immediately after suspending sales on March 20, they advised players to hang on to their tickets and sent an alert to all retailers notifying them of the problem.

"We are committed to having a process for players who were impacted by the issue with the Fast Play $20 Golden Jackpot ticket," the Lottery said in a statement yesterday. "The Hoosier Lottery strives to provide fun and entertaining experience for our players. We are working with our gaming system provider to determine what caused the issue and will work as quickly as possible to address the situation."

In April 2021, the New Jersey Lottery had to suspend Fast Play sales after a software error prevented the gaming system from selecting a Fast Play Progressive top prize tier "jackpot" winner.

The compensate for the error that prevented anyone from winning the jackpot, the Lottery offered players in possession of non-winning Fast Play tickets the option of submitting them to receive a voucher for a free ticket in amount equal to the dollar value of the eligible tickets submitted, including tickets that were previously entered in the Lottery's second chance drawing.