The 2017-2018 fiscal year turned out to be another jackpot-hitting year for the Pennsylvania Lottery, having set new records for both prize pay-outs and ticket sales. Maintaining a top spot among the United States’ highest grossing gaming entities, the Pennsylvania Lottery sold more than $4.2 billion in tickets, the highest since the $41 billion that it brought in previously during the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
According to the lottery’s recently released 2017-2018 financial statement, the winning tickets it sold translated into over $2.7 billion in prize payouts. Also, close to $1.1 billion went to programs designed to help older residents of the Keystone State.
“We’re proud that this was the seventh consecutive year in which we exceeded $1 billion in proceeds to benefit older adults. I’m grateful for the support of our players, business partners and the entire Lottery team for making this record year possible,” Drew Svitko, the Pennsylvania Lottery’s Executive Director said. “These encouraging results show that our ongoing modernization efforts are succeeding. With the Lottery facing increased competition from sports wagering, mini-casinos and other new forms of gambling, we must continue to work hard to grow revenues to benefit older Pennsylvanians.”
The state’s recently launched iLottery also helped it to break the aforementioned records, but this did not come without opposition. Pennsylvania’s iLottery game took its first bets in June and within the first month, it generated over $20 million in revenue.
The existing state casinos, however, felt that the iLottery had been violating an exclusivity agreement that had been introduced as part of the Keystone State’s statewide gambling expansion bill that was passed in October last year. The issue has, fortunately, since been resolved with the iLottery being forced to change its marketing materials even though it has not been barred from offering the games it had been offering.
Praise from Scientific Games
Renowned software developer and supplier Scientific Games Corporation has congratulated the Pennsylvania Lottery on the record sales.
“Scientific Games has a long history of investing in innovative games, technology, and services that maximize lottery funds to benefit older Pennsylvanians. We are proud that our partnership with the Pennsylvania Lottery has resulted in one of the highest performing lotteries in the world,” said Pat McHugh, the Senior Vice President of Global Lottery Systems for Scientific Games.
Apart from the Pennsylvania Lottery, Scientific Games suppliers more than 150 lotteries from different parts of the planet. In fact, it is the largest supplier of lottery instant games and is known for its expertise in complex, integrated systems technology implementations.
“We are very grateful for the support of our business partner Scientific Games over the last decade, from highly successful instant games to the technology innovation the company invested in to help us modernize with our popular mobile app and convenient new point-of-sale programs like cashless lottery payments and player self-service machines,” Drew Svitko commented.