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May 5, 2020

CT Lottery revenue fell 16% in March, rest of year uncertain

HBJ Photo | Matt Pilon Gregory Smith, CEO of the Connecticut Lottery Corp.
By Matt Pilon

Lotteries tend to remain strong during economic downturns, but the jury’s still out on whether that conventional wisdom will hold true during the ongoing and unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

The Connecticut Lottery Corp. recorded $107.2 million in March sales, a 15.9% drop from $127.5 million in March 2019, and below the agency’s pre-COVID-19 budget projections for the current fiscal year by about 10%, according to financials shared with the agency’s board of directors last month.

The decline was led by multi-state draw games Powerball and Mega Millions, whose revenues fell by nearly two-thirds, from $18.5 million in March 2019 to $6.4 million in the recent month.

Despite Connecticut restaurants and bars shuttering approximately halfway through March by order of Gov. Ned Lamont, Keno revenue was flat for the month, holding steady at $9.9 million.

Convenience stores and gas stations, many of which sell instant tickets and Keno, have been allowed to remain open during the pandemic, which could be bolstering sales.

Instant ticket sales fell from $67.9 million to $62.6 million in March, according to the lottery.

As of April 7, there were 2,450 lottery retailers actively selling tickets, down from 2,900 on March 1.

The lottery has not yet reported its April revenue, but the final week of March saw slowing sales compared to the rest of March.

During that week, instant ticket revenue was down about 25%, while Keno revenue was down more than 41%. Draw game sales were a brighter spot, down just 6.8%, according to meeting minutes.

The lottery is budgeted to transfer $359 million to state coffers in the current fiscal year that ends June 30, and as of March 31, it was ahead of pace by about $400,000.

The pandemic’s lottery revenue impact on the final few months of fiscal year 2020 is unknown, and lottery CEO Gregory Smith declined to issue projections at the April board meeting, according to minutes.

“... it would be difficult for us at this point in time to project where will the year end, what will our transfers look like and how soon will we get back to normal,” Smith said. “I think all of us would come forward with different variations of that so we chose not to go down that path quite yet but we will be evaluating that as we get further into this final quarter of the year and get a read on the length of the impact of this pandemic and if there’s any signals of a movement to return to normal. We are not ready for that for this meeting today.”

Will COVID-19 be the push lottery needs for online sales?

The Connecticut Lottery has long been pushing, unsuccessfully so far, for lawmakers to legalize online sales.

With many residents staying isolated at home due to coronavirus fears, and some perhaps not willing to risk going out to purchase lottery products at a store, the appetite for ilotto could be growing, Smith said during an April 7 meeting, according to recently posted minutes.

“I only included it in today’s discussion because I would not be surprised if it was allowed and authorized because it couples well with the limitations and the public restrictions,” Smith said. 

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1 Comments

Anonymous
May 7, 2020

New York has had online subscriptions for quite some time, if their experience to date has been good - then why not in CT during COVID19?

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