Mass. State Lottery is one step closer to online sales

Mass. State Lottery is one step closer to online sales — here’s why

The State Lottery Commission voted Tuesday to approve a five-year contract for the platform that is expected to launch the Lottery into the online and mobile world next summer, one that comes with a revenue-sharing model new to Massachusetts.

It was a unanimous vote to authorize Executive Director Mark William Bracken to enter into a deal for “a full-service iLottery platform and related services” with Aristocrat Interactive, which has also done business as NeoGames US. The commission voted in July to negotiate a contract with Aristocrat, which had been recommended by the procurement team that reviewed five responses the Lottery got to its solicitation.

The Lottery has long sought online sales, and with legislative approval in hand, it is expected to launch sometime next summer. The last decade has seen the emergence of legal casino gambling, fantasy sports and online sports betting as competition to the state Lottery. Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, who took office and began overseeing the Lottery in 2015, has said the move is essential if the agency is to continue generating more than $1 billion a year for the Legislature to use as local aid.

“This is a huge milestone. I’ve been around for a while. The years passed by quickly, but at times it did not seem like a quick process at all, and it was a very arduous process to get this done,” Commissioner Meghan Liddy, who was appointed to the commission by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2015, said. “Just huge congratulations to the team.”

Bracken said he would “take the congratulations on getting the RFR done and signing a contract,” but also that “we have a strict timeline now to get up and running.”

“You know, we’re saying summer of ’26 ... Summer, obviously, has the summer months. I would love it to be early summer of ’26 as opposed to late summer of ’26,” he said. “We’d love to get in the marketplace, meet our players where they are, you know, hopefully bring on some new players that aren’t exposed or aren’t in love with the products of our traditional retail because, like we’ve said before, online lottery really is a different product line.”

The House and Senate included online Lottery authorization in the fiscal year 2025 budget that Gov. Maura Healey signed last summer. Lottery officials initially planned to launch their “iLottery” in late 2025, but later bumped the timeline back to an April 2026 start of online sales. Goldberg later told lawmakers that she does not expect online sales to begin until “the summer of 2026,” with no revenue expected from the new stream in fiscal 2026.

Late last year, during a revenue hearing, Goldberg laid out her expectations for online Lottery revenue: more than $70 million in net profit from online sales in year one, more than $180 million by year three, more than $230 million in year five, and almost $360 million in year 10.

The amount of revenue the Lottery generates through online sales will determine how much it pays Aristocrat Interactive for the platform, Bracken explained.

“As contemplated by the Legislature and written into law, the Lottery he can spend up to 5% of its total revenues, which equate to sales ... for the payment and operation of the online Lottery. This is a business model that we’ve never entered into here at the Mass. State Lottery. It is a business model that every other lottery uses. So our retail operation will still work on an appropriation basis. Whereas the online operation, because we’re partnering with a third-party firm to help run the system, it’s based on a revenue share.”

Bracken also reported to the commission that the agency did $439.7 million in sales in July 2025, a $3.6 million or 0.8% increase over July 2024. Only two product categories saw increases, which were gnawed down by declines for all other categories: scratch ticket sales were up $6.9 million or 2.4% and Powerball sales were up $1.5 million or 25.9% for the month.

Bracken said the Lottery’s estimated profit for July 2025 was $69 million, compared to $71 million in July 2024. But after adding a one-day average net profit amount of $2.7 million to account for one fewer day captured in this year’s July sales snapshot, he said the Lottery considers July as having generated an estimated $700,000 increase in net profit compared to a year ago.

The Lottery paid out roughly 75.94% of July revenue as prizes last month, down from a 76.56% prize payout percentage in July 2024 but still higher than the three preceding years.

The Mass. Lottery produced an estimated net profit of $1.065 billion during the fiscal year that ended June 30. That beat Goldberg’s projection for a $1.05 billion return, but fell short of the $1.159 billion profit produced in fiscal 2024.

The Lottery’s revenue ended fiscal year 2025 at an estimated $5.962 billion, about $207 million less than the record-setting $6.168 billion revenue in fiscal 2024.

https://www.masslive.com/politics/2025/08/mass-state-lottery-is-one-step-closer-to-online-sales-heres-why.html