Online Lottery products off to fast start, help offset decline in retail sales
By COLIN YOUNG
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Oct. 27, 2026…..The Massachusetts Lottery is giving new meaning to the phrase scratch and sniff.
The winter holiday-themed scratch tickets the Lottery began launching this month offer “a little something new for our players,” Lottery marketing specialist Kate Sutton said. The $5 and $10 Candy Cane Cash Blowout tickets that became available Oct. 6 “are our first ever scented holiday tickets, with both Candy Cane Cash Blowout tickets smelling like, what else, but peppermint,” she said.
“And I have to report that our players are indeed loving them,” Sutton told the Lottery Commission.
Treasurer Deborah Goldberg chimed in after the virtual meeting presentation, “I could almost smell the peppermint from here.”
There is often interest in scratch tickets as stocking stuffers or gifts around the holiday season and the product category is an important one for the Lottery — and one that’s seen a decline in sales this budget year. Scratch ticket sales are down 6% in fiscal year 2027 and were down 7.3% in September alone, Executive Director Mark William Bracken said.
Scratch tickets sales accounted for roughly 70% of all Lottery sales as recently as fiscal year 2021. That figure has shrunk as the Lottery has put greater emphasis on other games like Keno and this summer introduced online “eInstant” games analogous to virtual scratch tickets.
Scratch tickets accounted for 65% of Lottery sales last year. So far this year, they represent 52% of sales — while eInstants have accounted for 18.5% of sales on their own.
Combined sales for September (retail and online) of $601.2 million were up $128.2 million or 27% from September 2025, when retail was the only sales channel. That broke down as a $54.8 million drop in retail sales offset by $183 million in online sales, Bracken said. Retail net profit for September was $57.9 million, an estimated $12.6 million drop from a year ago. Online net profit of $14 million offset the drop to net out at a $1.4 million increase in the month’s profit.
Through the first three months of fiscal year 2027, combined sales have totaled $1.72 billion and are up $241.2 million or 16.3% ($322.4 million in online sales, minus an $81.2 million decrease in retail sales), Bracken said. He said the Lottery is running $11.8 million ahead of its profit pace at this point last budget year, after adjusting for calendar differences.
“From the online perspective, we have far exceeded, I think, anyone’s expectations, both in internally here at the Mass. State Lottery as well as externally with not just our own platform provider, but all of our game providers,” Bracken said, while acknowledging the drop in retail sales. “Our initial estimate was to do 1.2 billion [dollars in net wagers] in the first year, and we had already done a half a billion in three months. So we are wildly exceeding anyone’s expectations. We’re kind of the talk of the country when it comes to the online lottery.”
The first three months of the fiscal year and the first three months of online sales are not the same three months; the $500 million figure Bracken referenced includes sales through last week.
Scratch tickets fell from 64% of Lottery sales to 52% in the first quarter of the fiscal year, as online eInstant games, launched in late July, took 18.5%. Total sales grew by $241.2 million.
Colin Young is the deputy editor for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach him at colin.young@statehousenews.com
