The New Mexico Lottery Board voted October 30 to create a “sports lottery” game with Intralot and extended its existing contract to provide online lottery services by another two years. The relationship began 11 years ago.
Intralot Group CEO Antonios Kerastaris stated after the announcement “This is a special day for us as this is our first such venture in the U.S. in the post-PASPA period.” This makes the New Mexico Lottery the first in the U.S. to offer a sports wagering game through its retail network of more than 1,100 terminals.
Players will be able to place money on a menu of possible sports outcomes. This type of wagering is called a parlay game.
The agreement stipulate that Intralot will use its Sports Lottery Gaming Platform with terminal software to customize the games for all 1,100 terminals.
New Mexico Lottery CEO David Barden said, “Today we reinforced our strong partnership with our systems vendor, Intralot by extending our contract for another 2 years. We also moved the Lottery industry forward as we took the approval from our Board to launch a Sports Lottery game throughout our retail network.”
He added, “We are always looking for games that strengthen our Lottery brand by attracting Millennials and other new players. Lottery games of this type are fun to play and will move us in that direction.”
It’s interesting to note that the state has not yet formally legalized sports betting, although the Santa Ana Star Casino near Albuquerque decided to skate near the edge, claiming that its sovereign rights allows it to offer sports betting in partnership with USBookmaking.
