Illinois Lottery hopes to make online sales a reality
The Illinois Lottery is putting forward a proposal to the State Justice Department to sell lottery tickets online.
The idea of selling lottery tickets over the internet is to make it easier for the people of Illinois to purchase tickets, which in turn will make more money for the state if the public have easier access to tickets.
Online gambling doesn’t have a great record in the state as a few years ago, the Justice Department made some types of gambling over the internet illegal, such as online poker.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department said that the issue was yet to be discussed in depth but that Illinois is hoping to come up with an an acceptable programme for online lottery sales.
Sales of lottery tickets and games online have the potential to be very lucrative for the state and many other lotteries have thought about introducing a system of selling tickets over the internet.
Margaret DeFrancisco, head of the Georgia Lottery and the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, said the federal government shouldn’t get a say on whether states can sell online. She feels that the decision should be made by state officials.
Published: April 6, 2010
