Online lottery a safe bet

Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, December 7, 2017.

North Carolina is thinking about expanding its lottery to include more games played on the internet. Players can already buy tickets for the big jackpot drawings on the lottery’s website. But now the North Carolina Education Lottery Commission is contemplating adding the online equivalent to the popular scratch-off tickets sold by thousands of lottery retailers across the state.

The idea has run into instant objections, from both longtime gambling opponents and from the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association, which fears its members will lose business to the online outlets.

Georgia, Kentucky and Michigan already offer similar online lottery games and they say the games haven’t cut into the profits at brick-and-mortar outlets. The games are popular with a different demographic — primarily younger, middle-class men. Typical scratch ticket customers in retail stores tend to be older, with lower annual incomes, and they have little interest in internet-based games.

An outside performance audit of the state lottery operations found that the state could add $130 million in revenue by adding online games.

But given the politics of the situation — objections from religious interests and fears of lost business for retailers — the lottery commission is wisely going slowly.

The commission should study the online business carefully, but unless it finds red flags, we’d urge the panel to expand further into online games. The proceeds from the estimated $130 million in new revenue would be greatly appreciated in our state’s cash-strapped schools.

http://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20171207/our-view-online-lottery-safe-bet