The Pennsylvania gaming industry may be moving slowly when it comes to PA sports betting, but that definitely isn’t true for the PA iLottery.
This year the Pennsylvania Lottery celebrated 46 years since its first drawing and has now expanded into new, more promising grounds. The PA Online Lottery benefited greatly from this October’s expansion of the gaming law, which extended its range of online games.
Alongside Keno, the gaming expansion law allowed the PA Online Lottery to also introduce instant games and Xpress Sports, all of which ended up becoming the lottery’s most popular products, second only to scratch-offs.
PA iLottery Interactive Games A Huge Success
It didn’t take long before the PA iLottery’s interactive games took over the Pennsylvania gaming market. Since the interactive games launch on May 22, PA iLottery has seen $130,736,825 in revenue. Sales reached $20.8 million in the first month of operation.
The reason behind the PA iLottery’s immense success is perhaps the interactive games having a striking similarity to scratch-offs. Scratch-offs are responsible for 66.6% of the sales for the Pennsylvania Lottery, which amounts to more than $2.8 billion. The demand for paper scratch-offs has even surpassed that of Mega Millions, the PA Lottery’s oldest and most recognizable draw game.
Keno Is Going Strong For PA iLottery
The PA Online Lottery introduced Keno three weeks before the other Lottery games and although it’s hard to compare numbers with the Lottery’s megahit, Keno also did impressively well on the market. Keno brought in $7.6 million in sales during the first two months and this number has added up to $23,863,194.
Steady sales are just as useful as growing sales in a time when the Pennsylvania Lottery is facing competition at every turn, with mini-casinos and PA sports betting operators turning up. The success of new, modernized games is great news for PA iLottery, as it hopes to stay at the top of the PA gaming market. A percentage of the profits fund programs for older Pennsylvanians.
Xpress Sports To Compete With PA Sportsbooks
It’s precisely the competition with PA sportsbooks the iLottery found itself in that led to the controversy surrounding the launch of its third product, Xpress Sports. Controversy is a bit of an understatement - the launch resulted in an outright lawsuit on behalf of numerous PA casinos.
Xpress Sports is a realistic animated sports game that simulates matchups with randomly generated outcomes. The game is certainly realistic enough for sports fans to generate sales just shy of $1 million in its first two months. The future of Xpress Sports, however, is less than certain now with the official launch of PA sports betting.
The PA iLottery is sure to motivate other states to consider an online lottery. The word of the Lottery’s record sales is out and the whole gaming industry is watching.
