The Massachusetts State Lottery Tuesday stated it could be in some financial trouble regarding its overall sales for the fiscal year, despite the massive ticket sales generated by the recent Powerball jackpot worth $2 billion.
According to Lottery Interim Director Mark Bracken, as of Sunday, lottery sales for the 2023 fiscal year are $22.5 million less than what they were for fiscal 2022. This includes overall instant ticket and scratch ticket sales, but it's an improvement from the $60 million gap between September's 2023 and 2022 fiscal years.
Bracken believes the boost in sales in October was an outlier, however, because of the recent historical $2 billion Powerball jackpot drawing at the end of the month.
"We are still very concerned about our sales for the current fiscal year," Bracken said. "The only reason why our sales have rebounded a little bit is because of the Powerball jackpot. Right now, what we're seeing is that our sales are really indicative of jackpot-driven games and not games that we have control over."
In October 2022, the Lottery sold a combined $439.9 million in products, an increase of $8.3 million or 1.9 percent over October 2021, according to figures Bracken presented to the Lottery Commission on Tuesday.
The Lottery sold $439.9 million in products during October 2022, an $8.3 million increase from October 2021, and most of the increase was due to Powerball. The Lottery also paid out $5.8 million less in prizes compared to October last year, and in combination with the boost in sales and less prize payments, the Lottery's net profit was $90.1 million in October.
Despite the lurch in sales, an overall slowdown in sales has greatly impacted the organization. Lottery sales were down $52.3 million during the first four months of the 2023 fiscal year, a 2.6% decrease from fiscal 2022. Bracken stated though November 2022"s sales have not yet been published, he's expecting the year-to-date sales shortfall to be cut to just $22.5 million.
Bracken is still concerned about Lottery sales because the Lottery does not have much control over jackpot games, and scratch tickets and Keno sales — 85% of all Lottery sales — have also been on the decline. Scratch ticket sales were down $76.4 million in this past October, and Keno was down $9 million, according to officials.
On the upside, Bracken stated the upcoming holiday season is "really our most popular release of instant tickets" and the projected influx of scratch ticket sales could provide some help to the organization. The Lottery is also trying out a new advertising slogan, "The best gifts are made from scratch," to aid scratch ticket sales through December.
The Lottery is also bringing in a new game to replace its unpopular "All or Nothing" drawing game called "The Wheel of Luck," which will begin on Jan. 19, 2023.
Some Massachusetts officials in the past have said the slowdown has been caused by rising inflation, along with other "broader market trends affecting other state lotteries."
Bracken said that the Lottery may request the incoming Maura Healey administration to boost its advertising budget to $10 million from its current $4.5 million, especially given the Lottery being a major source of local aid that state and local governments are dependent on.
"For the amount of revenue we bring in, compared to our advertising budget, we are the lowest (state lottery) advertising budget in the nation other than one state that does not have an advertising budget," Bracken said.
"And we're not talking by a little. We're talking exponentially. Some states, per dollar of revenue, they have two, three, four, five, six times the amount of advertising budget."
A $4.7 million contract was also approved on Tuesday to allow the Lottery to use UPS and FedEx for delivery services, and a $150,000 contract with JANUS Software for "penetration testing services" along with network security reviews.
Not too surprised nor do I care.
They opted to have the subscription service center moved from Braintree, MA to Atlanta. The fees for the few games out of staters can play went up too much.
They no longer allow subscription ticket sales @ retail stores.
Years ago had written a letter to the Treasurer over the lottery suggesting they offer on-line sales and @ that time what games KY could play that way. As I said before no reply ever sent. To non-MA residents (my home state) bear in mind it is still a Puritan minded government; i.e. bars closing @ 0100. Good luck getting legislatures to be on board for progressive lottery changes. Despite the Family Council here griping about the lottery in KY, it seems to be that KLC has complete control of the reigns.
They have, last time I checked, two offices in Braintree for what reason doesn't make sense to me.
The states are discovering what happens when you flood the market with many different types of gambling, while at the same time limiting people's budgets by implementing horrendous economic policies that destroy the economy.
I wouldn't play in a state that takes 5 years to quad either. Players feel like it's rigged!
Exactly. Wait till the out of control Fed raises rates again this month and triggers a housing collapse. Stock market predictions are essentially flat for 2023.
It sounds like people are being smarter with their money. =0p
Powerball was much more fun when it drew once a week. Same for Mega Millions. I agree with all of Todd's comments and feel the general public is suffering from lottery fatigue. However heads of lotteries seem to concentrate focus groups on the results they intend, as opposed to realistically studying declining economic conditions of their supporting players.
If anyone wants the fun of guessing numbers for Powerball and Mega Millions please join in Maddog's Powerball and Mega Millions challenges on Lottery Post for each draw. That won't help lottery ticket sales but they've proven they're not responsive to their player base.
I agree, the PB and MM challenge threads are some of the best!
Shows how depended many state lotteries are on extra large MM and PB sales. Less than 20 million tickers were sold for an over $300 million jackpot. States like Massachusetts are barely selling enough tickets to pay off $1 million second prize winner.
The good news is if the MM jackpot keeps rolls six more drawings until Christmas, look for lots of people to find MM or PB tickets in their stocking.
If you notice, there aren't many second prize winners lately in PB and MM. Quite often not a single second tier winner.
It is either people have less spare money to play, or perhaps have more doubt that they can win, after playing a lot to win 2BLN.
My hunch, that in the recession time, when things are uncertain, more people should be trying their luck, even if they don't have much money. I always thought in the time of trouble lotteries actually sky-rocket. But lately it has been the other way around. So that must be trust issue.
Yesterday found some old KY lotto Christmas envelopes so this year will put a scratch ticket and maybe one of the big guys if the jackpot for MM continues to grow. This is for our Christmas Eve dinner folks...they love it.
Sadly, Kentucky Lottery doesn't print these anymore. Went away with mechanical ball drawings it seems. Last year they had it on-line where you could print your own. How cheap is that??
Some states, like Michigan, just have too many stupid games to play! All the money that people squander on the drunken bar keno (club Keno) does not go into any jackpot game. Michigans Daily Keno went to RNG in 2002 and there have been more draws with fewer winners on that game. Michigan also has a stupid game called Poker Lotto which has comparable odds to the daily keno but the prize is $100,000 vs $250,000 for the daily keno and the PL ticket price is $2 vs $1 for the DK.
Don't get me started on how dumb the Michigan RNG games are either.
Anyway, since Michigan went RNG in 2002 and the Multi State Matrices got changed in 2013 and 2015 nobody wins anything anymore. They might as well change the slogan to "Everyone is going to lose why not you too!"
Never in the history of the recent lotteries (1964-) have there been so many bad games. Maybe people are finally waking up and realizing just how bad all the current games truely are!
Suggestion to MA, take the $10,000,000 you want to dump into advertising and figure out a good game with a $10,000,000 cash payout. How dumb do you have to be not to realize nobody wants to play stupid, crappy games!
A lot of state lotteries (if not all) are looking for ways to increase sales (income). The only way to do that is to introduce new games that might appeal to players who are tired of the old games that have been around for years, and or increase the number of draws each day (Texas) for games, Pick 3, Daily 4, All or Nothing. When Power Ball started having draws on Mondays, Texas naturally started having Lotto draws on Mondays also (Lotto draws are also on Wed, and Sat).
It's rather funny (not in a good way) that lotteries advise players to play within a budget, don't spend too much money, etc, but keep enticing players to play more games more often.
I take back my suggestion and replace it with a new one.
Massachusetts should take that $10,000,000 and lobby for ticket sales across state lines.
The Mass Scratchers are better than the vast majority of scratchers form other states (with a rare exception here and there).
If I could I certainly would mail order the $20 and $30 tix from Mass. Heck, even their $10 tix are better than most of the Michigan scratchers.
If you want to increase sales then lobby to sell your tickets across state lines and forget about advertising!
They stopped putting second chance drawings on their $30 tickets also. They dont even sell the Fastest Road and Diamond Millions tickets anymore and theres still $1 million prizes left.