Lottery in North Carolina Surpasses $1bn in Digital Instant Game Sales

In November, the North Carolina Education Lottery confirmed the launch of mobile scratch-off games that have also become popular as digital instants. Following other US states that have already rolled out the activity, the Lottery sought that it would benefit its popularity and sales.

This was a correct projection as mobile scratch-offs gained significant popularity across the state and the Lottery recently confirmed that it has surpassed $1 billion in sales from the new online lottery games. The announcement came during a meeting on Wednesday, as reported by WRAL.

During the meeting, lottery officials highlighted that the sales of digital instants through the end of May surpassed $943 million. A whopping 68% of the total sales were completed by customers via the Lottery’s mobile application.

What’s more, considering that nearly two weeks have passed since the start of June, the sales from digital instants have definitely surpassed the mind-blowing $1 billion.

Per the recently disclosed data, the Lottery reported more than $4.8 billion in sales within all of its different games through last month. The figure represented a mind-boggling growth of more than $857 million year-over-year.

A breakdown of the $4.8 billion sales figure highlighted the popularity of scratch-off lottery games which were responsible for 55% of the sales. More importantly, 19% of the sales came from digital instant games.

Digital Instants Served as a Catalyst for the Lottery’s Growth

Greg Bowers, the North Carolina Education Lottery’s deputy executive director for finance, praised the introduction of digital instant games, outlining their contribution toward the solid results. He explained: “As we’ve been predicting, that growth in traditional lottery games that we’ve seen would slow or become negative at some point.” In addition, Bowers said that the launch came at the right time, considering the slowing down of traditional lottery games.

“The launch of digital instant games has been the catalyst this year to allow us to post year-over-year revenue gains.“

Greg Bowers, deputy executive director for finance at the North Carolina Education Lottery

Earlier this year, the state launched mobile sports betting. While industry skeptics raised their concerns about the potential impact of the activity on the Lottery, according to Bowers, it is too early to predict what the impact would be.

The deputy executive director for finance said that the Lottery continues to monitor that development. “We’re carefully looking at what other lotteries or other states have seen when they launch sports betting. It may. It may not have a big impact, it may have a small impact,” added Bowers.

North Carolina’s mobile betting launched on March 11. Despite the strong start in March and April, the second full month of betting action, May, saw the revenue drop by 40.1%.

While in April, the betting operators reported $569.2 million in betting handle, May’s handle halted at $494.6 million. This decrease resulted in a dip in the revenue which fell to $63 million in May, down by more than 40% when compared to the $105.2 million result in April.