The Massachusetts Lottery has formally issued a request for information (RFI) from organizations to develop an online lottery.
The RFI includes proposals for digital versions of existing and new lottery games, fantasy sports and social gaming. The Lottery is also interested in hybrid systems that allow a mix of online and brick and mortar locations. The RFI specifies that the Lottery is particularly interested in information on player account registration, management and authentication, as well as how to introduce “responsible gaming controls.” It wants to know also how to protect existing businesses that sell lottery tickets.
Re: daily fantasy sports (DFS), Lottery Executive Director Michael Sweeney commented, “We believe the introduction of a fantasy sports platform at Mass. Lottery would help to embrace an emerging market while continuing to protect our retail partners,” Lottery Executive Director Michael Sweeney told the News Service in November. “This particular type of game would not cannibalize our existing products.” It would be a new product that would help the lottery to engage a new generation of players, he said.
“We believe the introduction of a fantasy sports platform at Massachusetts Lottery would help to embrace an emerging market while continuing to protect our retail partners,” Sweeney added.
Sweeney called fantasy sports “the biggest challenge” facing his industry.
State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, whose department oversees the lottery, has previously warned that the lottery needs to evolve in order to compete with the state’s casinos and with daily fantasy sports. Currently scratchers account for 87 percent of lottery sales.
Although it would require an extensive action by the legislature for the lottery to offer, for example, online poker, social gaming and daily fantasy sports would not.
The Bay State seems to be taking a somewhat different approach to its neighbor New York, where Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has criticized the “fraudulent nature” of DFS, but Massachusetts AG Maura Healey has said that no federal law forbids the industry.
Healey does want to regulate the industry and has unveiled proposed regulations for protecting consumers.
Recently Massachusetts Gaming Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby said publicly “Would it make sense for the legislature to try to craft an omnibus regulatory bill for all of these new electronic gaming technologies—because there’s so many of them?” He added, “If they could craft a bill, which incorporated regulatory priorities, fundamental values, whatever, that could be applied to all of these games—e-sports, daily fantasy sports, online poker, whatever all the new ones are—maybe then they could give it to some agency to implement, and the agency does the grunt work every six months making it apply to whatever the new technology is.”
Bay State lawmakers are already planning on taking up the issue, probably using Healey’s suggestions as a framework, but also with consultation from the DFS industry, as well as suggestions from the commission.
State Senator Bruce Tarr plans to introduce a bill that would allow the state’s casinos to offer online gaming, including poker. Right now he is showing copies of the legislation to fellow legislators to get feedback before he actually introduces a bill.
The commission plans to submit its own white paper sometime this year. Political watchers in Massachusetts predict that DFS will be addressed separately, rather than being included in an omnibus bill that includes online poker. Crosby raised the omnibus bill idea last month.
