Now you can play official New York Lottery Games online!
Lotto.com is an online lottery service that delivers lottery tickets to customers electronically, allowing them to play their favorite games from the comfort of their own homes. By logging onto the website, lottery players can order Powerball or Mega Millions tickets and have them sent right to their device.
“We’re essentially the Uber Eats of lottery, we deliver tickets to customers from the retailer and we deliver them electronically,” said Tom Metzger, CEO of Lotto.com. “Traditional lottery has pretty much been the same since it was launched in 1964, we’re making it much more convenient and accessible to a different audience.”
Lotto.com has been licensed by the New York State Lottery as a ticket retailer for the online consumer. Once their age is verified, users can order tickets with a few clicks. They can also set limits on how much they play.
Metzger says that playing on Lotto.com is safer than your traditional retail experience because once you have your ticket, you can’t lose it.
“You’d be surprised how many people lose their ticket in the back of their jeans in the laundry. Or god forbid they accidentally throw out a winning ticket which happens all the time,” said Metzger. “There’s also no question about ownership of the ticket. Before we upload a ticket to the owner’s account, we put a watermark on it with the user’s name and our company logo so there’s no debate as to where they bought it or who owns it.”
For Metzger, making Lotto.com accessible was paramount. The site is set up in a way that no matter what kind of device you use (iPhone, Android, desktop, laptop, etc.), the platform is exactly the same.
“We wanted to develop a user experience that really was as frictionless as possible. In order to do that, we don’t require an app download, we don’t require pre-funding a wallet, you can just visit our site and buy a Powerball ticket for $2, check out and what we’re seeing is the user experience is so great that north of 80% of our customers return for a second purchase,” said Metzger.
So far, Lotto.com has almost 200,000 customers in New York alone since launching around three months ago. The website is only accessible for those living in New York, New Jersey, Colorado and Texas, but the website has plans to expand in the coming months and years.
“In 2011, the OLC made it legal at the federal level to sell lotto tickets online. Since that time in 2011, only 10 states have chosen to launch their own internet lotto website,” said Metzger. “We’re focused on the other 35 states that have lotteries, and don’t have the legislative or commercial appetite to do it themselves.”
Metzger noted that online lottery sales have been a part of Europe’s lottery system for around 20 years now. Similarly to how it’s done in Europe, Lotto.com isn’t looking to take over retail sales, but to work with retail sales to boost all lottery sales.
“In the U.K., they launched online and it has grown to be 43% of their total sales without any cannibalization of retail, there has never been any downtick in retail. We’re not really competing with retail at all,” said Metzger.
The company is also looking to be a company that does good work with the funding they raise with the New York Lottery system.
“The Lottery did 8 billion in sales last year and returned 3.6 billion in education funds for New York. We don’t just want to do well, we want to do good,” said Metzger. “We are laser-focused on making a bigger pie and bringing incremental players to the lottery who can afford it.”
Though right now Lotto.com only offers draw-based games, there are potential opportunities to grow the offerings with scratch-off games as well. But right now, the brand is working to get more of those who might not have played the lottery before to do so in a way that is more accessible to them.
“The lottery has to evolve with everything else that is now done digitally. We have to bring it to the player and not expect them to come to you,” said Metzger. “So that’s why we developed our platform to be so flexible.”
For more information, visit lotto.com.
