Though initial projections were overly optimistic, a more pragmatic approach still indicates substantial growth.
The US online lottery industry at this point remains a largely untapped market—but that could change very soon.
New Forms of Lottery Online
New online platforms incoming to the US could spur increases of up to $17.5 billion in annual sales. The key boost online would be a 33% increase in sales to new lottery players. The newest B2B online lottery platform comes from betting operator Tipp24's subsidiary Lottovate, which has enlisted the assistance of an independent third party research firm to prove the reality of an untapped market.
Untapped Market Figures
Figures from UK-based YouGov indicate that 27.1% of US adults indicating interest in playing lottery games via PC or mobile devices. Of existing lottery players, 41% expressed interest in participating in the online medium. Another 8.3% of US adults who currently don’t play the lottery said they would play if an online option was available. Of potential online lottery offerings, the well-known nine-figure jackpot yielding multi-state draw games were tabbed to have the most appeal.
At this point, a scant three states in the US have made lottery tickets available online: Illinois, Minnesota and Georgia. But it's not just about the ability to offer online lotteries, but the ability in the online form to offer variations on straight ticket sales, with Minnesota currently the only state to offer a variation—in the form of online scratch tickets.
Pragmatic Projections
The optimism behind these robust numbers should be tempered the recent downgrade of industry earning projections by investment experts Morgan-Stanley. Initial estimates of $3.5b by 2017 and $8b by 2020 were adjusted after legislative and bureaucratic obstacles manifested in the three states currently offering online gambling. Morgan-Stanley now more pragmatically offers a projected worth of $1.3 billion in 2017 and $5 billion by 2020. Even if one factors in the Deutsche Bank response projections of no more than $2.2b by 2020, the growth of online gambling in the US is still nothing to sneeze at. Where the true earning fall between these parameters could well be a product of how rapidly states embrace hybrid forms of online lotteries.
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