Massachusetts government pushes for online lottery

The state Treasurer said Massachusetts needs to allow the lottery to go online in order to compete with New Hampshire’s.

US.- Massachusetts Treasurer Deborah Goldberg is seeking to get lawmakers to pass legislation to allow an online lottery in the state. As they are also looking into sports betting regulation, the official said the lottery is “fully capable of handling” its oversight, but called for new rules to compete with New Hampshire’s online lottery.

“This is an operating company that needs to modernize, and what we are seeing across the world is a cannibalization of sales and the disruption caused for bricks-and-mortar companies by the internet,” Goldberg told legislators. “And particularly, there are only so many entertainment dollars in total, so Lottery for a very long time was a predictable, terrific business, but it had no competition.”

She also explained she believes “sports betting will happen this session” but warned: “When sports betting is going, when daily fantasy sports is going, if we don’t have the lottery online, we absolutely must advertise more.”

“We’re supportive of the treasurer’s move to online lottery,” Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan said and added: “It seems to be a different demographic from the folks that play in sports betting so we think it is not a reallocating of the same pie, it actually is growing the pie of revenues to the state versus cannibalizing another form of gambling.”