Lottery will not pay out prizes to players engaging in "excessive purchasing"
By Kate Northrop
The Arizona Lottery approved a rule amendment banning bulk Fast Play ticket purchases in an effort to curb "excessive purchasing" in a given timeframe.
In June, the Arizona Lottery Commission announced that it implemented new rules to limit the value of Fast Play tickets either an individual or group can buy within a certain period of time.
The rule, titled "Prohibition of Bulk Ticket Purchases" prevents anyone from buying more than $50,000 worth of Fast Play tickets within a 24-hour period. Those who do exceed the limit, whether individually or in coordination with others, are at risk of being ineligible to claim prizes associated with those tickets.
In light of recent events surrounding a $95 million jackpot buyout event in Texas, the move is part of the Arizona Lottery's efforts to "uphold public trust and ensure that all players have equitable access" to its games.
"Our goal is to ensure that every player has a fair chance at winning and that the integrity of our games remains strong," Lottery Executive Director Alec Thomson said in a press release. "This update protects our players and supports the Lottery's mission of maximizing net revenue in a responsible way."
The safeguard also allows the Lottery to "address suspicious purchasing behavior that could undermine the designed structure and fairness of the Fast Play experience for everyday players," the Lottery explained.
Anyone whose purchasing behavior appears to violate the new rule may trigger an investigation by the Lottery, which promises to evaluate cases using transaction data, surveillance footage, and retailer reports.
"This is exactly the kind of common sense rulemaking that we have been advocating at Lottery Post," explained Todd Northrop, Founder of Lottery Post. "It's a rule that no regular player will ever encounter, it stops deep-pocketed groups from buying jackpots, and it does not require banning services like lottery couriers and scapegoating them to hide underlying loopholes."
Players who are determined to be engaging in bulk buys or coordinated excessive ticket purchases may have their prize claims denied.
"These updates are part of the Arizona Lottery's broader effort to strengthen transparency, player protection, and trust in its games," the Lottery stated. "The specific purchase threshold and time window will be detailed in the official Fast Play game rules and may be updated as needed."
Congratulations to the Arizona Lottery for instituting this rule. This is exactly what we have been advocating for the past year, when the situation in Texas starting cropping up, and officials there wrongly blamed courier services.
We strongly advocated for a bulk ticket limit to solve all these issues back in October of 2024: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/352288
Instead of doing that, the Texas Lottery doubled down on wrongly blaming couriers and banned them. The predictable result was:
As we explained last year, this could have all been avoided with a simple rule like the one the Arizona Lottery has just enacted. So again, congratulations to the Arizona Lottery for illustrating the right way of dealing with loopholes when they are uncovered.
Glad I read the whole article before commenting. Yes, this is good legislation to protect regular players!
Aren't the Fast Play tickets only computer generated? Or am I missing something?
The problem with bulk purchasing like in case of Lotto Texas came from a group buying up individual combinations which were manually entered. On the contrary, Fast Play tickets are computer generated so there's no way to ensure an individual or group can actually cover all the combinations.
So while it helps to some extent to even out the odds, it doesn't really make any significant difference like the AZ Lottery claims as that same group might end up with duplicate combinations. The computer decides which numbers to spit out and not the individual or group purchasing the tickets.
It's the games that can be manually played like PB, MM or the state lottery games that need to be limited that'd have a significant impact and would avoid a Lotto Texas type situation.
I would guess the lottery has determined mathematically that there is a chance somebody could purchase the jackpot once it grows to a certain size through bulk purchases. Even if tickets are quick picks, there will only be a certain smallish number that would overlap. So if they had lets say 5 or 10 percent of tickets that overlapped, they still might make a profit. I don't know the exact numbers, but I trust the lottery would make the rule in light of something they discovered.
The fact that they are adding this particular rule is a very good thing, because it is something that would never even come close to impacting a regular player, but still guards again someone buying a jackpot, and does not scapegoat unrelated courier services.
Personally, I don't think anyone even buys bulk Fast Plays as it doesn't make sense mathematically. Fast Plays are like slot machines which are intended to give the house an 80%+ advantage. Jackpots on the other hand have fixed odds -- the more combinations you play the more you're likely to win.
So gonna wait and see if the AZ Lottery gives any explanation for the reasoning behind the decision.
Total BS.....open and transparency. Total scam. Drawings are at 7pm yet they don't release results till close to 8pm or later. Switching to a computer random generator has allowed them to scam the player. I truly believe they are using the system to pick the least pick numbers to ensure the house wins. They claim all the nu5are in the system but certain numbers haven't been drawn in years. They have multiple repeating numbers mainly doubles for pick3 drawings along with currently no triple drawn in close to 2yrs. The other drawing games are low in people playing them. The #1 games are scratchers period. To get information on why the delay for results they claim all the drawn tickets need to be loaded into the system? They use an outside group aka them through an LLC to police the drawings yet no videos. They claim that the switch was to save money but the cost for drawing the number have gone up per themselves. How? They say its checked to ensure everything is ok yet. The delay opens the door to cheating for them. A group currently is positioning themselves to play every combination for each game to win and they knew it hence the rules. If a group spend $1 million or what ever who cares. Notice no mention of the scratchers. Buy as many as you want. They know when the ultimate winning scratcher goes out from the looks of it. Even got the hid the winner law here now. But employees of the lottery can not play. Ok.....There are only a 1000 combinations for pick3 soon someone will play $1000 on each number combinations and the state will see a malfunction in the drawing to not allow a win. Mark my words. This is a retirement state and retires play triples along with biblical numbers. Yet here we are with a nonsense rule.
Is Fast Play the same in AZ as it is in KY? Here you know right away if you won, when ticket prints you scan it. We don't have drawings for our Fast Play. It, like Keno, is an RNG game.
Please address my concerns with AZ Fast Play.
AZ has no rules to prevent a buyout of the Pick6 or Fantasy5 AZ lotteries, where the jackpot estimate is published.
Only a few Fast Play games have progressive jackpots, and in those games, the jackpots aren't published (at least, they don't show up on the arizonalottery.com website) , and play numbers/symbols are machine chosen and not player chosen.
Since Fast Play buyouts only make sense when the jackpot estimate is known, and when the number of tickets purchased give a high enough expected probability of winning (buyout not guaranteed, but is statistical), and the cost of the buyout tickets is well below the jackpot, anti-buyout rules make more sense for Pick6 and Fantasy5,
So the rollout of their anti-buyout rules for Fast Play first, without mentioning similar rules for Pick6 or Fantasy5 makes no sense in that it is INCONSISTANT.
The anti-buyout rules make no sense at all for the non-progressive jackpot Fast Play games. No number of tickets makes sense for a buyout ever in that case.
Kind of strange here that Fast Play is listed for on line games...yet you can't purchase them apparently unless @ the store. Many different games listed with different jackpots. At the lottery machine on the ever so slow to get displayed jackpot screen Fast Play does show the largest jackpot from what I can gather. (KY).
* Whatsoever happened to the notion that winning the lottery is a game of chance? 🧐
Hey Todd related adjacent to the Arizona Lottery, you have the tax rate for AZ on the analysis page set at 2.5% That's the income tax rate but lottery winnings are currently taxed at 4.5% for AZ residents and 6% out of state residents
They passed the tax correction act in May so lottery winnings will be taxed at 2.5% but not until mid September
As you have noted, the Tax corrections act of 2025 (SB1274) clarifies that Arizona lottery winnings are taxed at the highest state income tax rate, which is a flat 2.5%. I can't see where it indicates that it does not go into effect until September, but for the purposes of the analysis I will assume that this tax bill, like most others, is retroactive from the beginning of 2025. Also, any tax attorney worth their weight in salt would have the winner delay their jackpot claim until after the enactment of the bill, if that is necessary. (I don't think it would be, but I would defer to a lawyer.)
So for the purposes of the analysis, it is best left at the 2.5%, which in my opinion is correct, given all the circumstances. It feels pedantic to briefly nudge the rate higher, only to lower it a few months later, when that is really just for show.
"I would guess the lottery has determined mathematically that there is a chance somebody could purchase the jackpot once it grows to a certain size through bulk purchases. "
I'm not sure if the decision was based on normal probability. I don't know how the game works, but if all tickets are quick picks the probability of getting duplicate combinations will work the same way it does for other games unless it's not based on matching combinations as with other games.
"Even if tickets are quick picks, there will only be a certain smallish number that would overlap. "
That's not at all how it works if you're trying to capture nearly all of the combinations/possibilities in a typical game. There won't be many duplicates early on, but the more combinations you cover the more duplicates you'll get with subsequent tickets.
Once you've covered 5% of the combinations 5% of future tickets will be duplicates. When you've covered 10% of the combinations 10% will be duplicates. And so on. To cover 90% of the possible combinations by picking them randomly you need to buy 2.3 times as many tickets as there are combinations, and nearly 61% of your tickets will b duplicates. Want even more of them? 90% of the tickets you buy after that will be duplicates. Getting the next 5% of combinations will require buying almost 70% as many tickets as there are combinations. In the case of MM you'd need to buy a bit over 200 million more tickets on top of the 667 million you needed for 90% coverage.
All those extra tickets will add a bunch of money to the jackpot you'd be hoping to win, but if somebody else also has the wining combination you've probably lost even more money. The only saving grace is that there's a fairly good chance you'd have 2 or 3 jackpot winning tickets, so there's a good chance you'd get 2/3 or even 3/4 of the jackpot.
"It's the games that can be manually played like PB, MM or the state lottery games that need to be limited "
Yup. Unless there's something unusual about how this particular game determines winners based on selling quick picks I don't see what they intend to accomplish.
Dude what are you talking about? Apparently you don't know what a Fast Play ticket is. Fast Play tickets print out of the lottery terminal or a lottery vending machine. YOU instantly know if you have won or not by looking at the ticket or scanning it. There are NO waiting until the numbers are drawn. Arizona feels that there is a problem with some people trying to buy up all the Fast Play tickets in the Progressive games, which are jackpots that continually grow until someone wins. In my area of the Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) The most I have seen a Progressive jackpot grow is to about 2.7 million dollars. I can see how someone would think it would be profitable for them to buy Progressive Fast Play tickets in bulk, to try and win the jackpot. It is the same thing as when people buy whole packs of $100, $50, $30, $20 and $10 scratch-off tickets, trying to win the jackpot prize.
9 out of 36 Fast Games show a progressive jackpot. And for whatever reason, the jackpot estimate shows up now when I visited the arizonalottery.com website. Go figure.
My main points were
dont tell me how to buy my lottery tickets
those of us who don't live in arizona might need clarification about what 'fast play' is. is it a standalone game, an add on game, a synonym for quick pick? why are they limiting fast play bulk purchases but not other kinds of bulk purchases? what's special about bulk buying fast play compared to bulk buying mega millions or powerball?
I'm a semi new Texas resident and the whole carrier freeze left me baffled, thanks so much for this refreshing breakdown.
Fast Plays are Scratcher-like games (some are duplicates of scratcher games) except instead of card, the play ticket is generated on the fly by the kiosk and replaces the play card. This opens up a number of security vulnerabilities in my mind if you have physical access to hack and reverse engineer a machine. I think they are putting too much confidence in a TPM chip securing the boot sequence.
Some Fast Plays have progressive jackpots (9 of 36 games currently). A person can calculate the probability that purchasing X tickets will get the jackpot win. If the cost of X tickets is much less than the jackpot and if the win probability is high enough for that X purchase, then a buyout makes sense for the player.
What is odd to me is that they have no anti-buyout rules for other progressive jackpot games where you can assure a buyout (complete cover) of all possibilities since the player choses the numbers in those games, unlike the Fast Plays.
thanks for the explanation. i see on the az lottery website what you're talking about now. strange that they don't also limit scratchers sales for the same reason.