So far in 2017, Massachusetts has become one of the states that have seen progress in their legislation of online gambling activities. However, some of the state’s officials, and more specifically the State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, expressed their concern about the future of the online lottery sales, saying the latter could be actually threatened by online gambling.
Ms. Goldberg has been calling for the state authorities, ans especially for the Massachusetts Special Commission on Online Gaming, Fantasy Sports Gaming and Daily Fantasy Sports to make online lotteries legal in Massachusetts.
Currently, it is Ms. Goldberg’s office that oversees the lottery commission. The latter, along with the Special Commission, both held meetings in late March 2017. After the meetings took place, the State Treasurer called the local authorities for more caution on the matter related to online gambling and online lotteries. As mentioned above, Ms. Goldberg expressed her concern that online gambling might be permitted in the state before online lottery do.
It was at the beginning of the year when the State Treasurer urged the local authorities to lay their eyes on the online lottery legislation in Massachusetts. Unfortunately for the supporters of online lottery in the state, the local legislature seems to be remaining a bit sceptical towards online lottery sales despite the fact significant legislative process was made in 2016 and the increasing pressure coming from Goldberg’s office.
Still, the fact that the Gaming Commission is currently not allowed to discuss online lottery matters, is worth to be taken into account. Actually, this could mean that online lottery could be made legal before online gambling operations in the state of Massachusetts. Also, the Special Commission is expected to officially present its recommendations and findings to the state legislature at the end of July.
As mentioned above, the main concern of the State Treasurer is the fact that online lottery sales could be seriously hurt in case that online gaming is made legal before the lotteries. In fact, the problem is not that serious, because there is only a small advantage of the online casino and poker players to online lottery players. This is exactly the reason why such a serious threat to online lottery sales is not very likely to be posed in terms of online gambling.
The bigger problem is probably the community’s attitude towards online gambling, as the latter has long been considered as “cannibalistic”. This trend has been one of the largest ones across the US and have been noted in various states across the country. The problem is that a few years ago, in 2011, the US card rooms registered a decline in the number of players, which was considered as the first indication that online gambling could hurt retail operators’ performance.
However, this belief proved that it could not be so serious trend after all. Recently, the results of the New Jersey casinos not only proved this belief false, but also proved that online gambling could be beneficial to the local operators’ land-based properties.
- Author
Daniel Williams
