The Iowa Lottery has observed a significant improvement in its Lotto America financials during the start of FY2023, according to CEO Matt Strawn.
As reported by Radio Iowa, more drawings have helped the Iowa Lottery ‘far exceed’ its expectations in the first two months of this fiscal year.
Strawn said: “Adding a third day for Powerball. Adding daily draws for Lucky for Life. We’re continuing to see revenue lifts even a year later from those game changes.
“More recently in July, we added a third draw to lateral America. So you’ll see in the financials, that Lotto America is performing dramatically ahead of where it was last year.”
The prior two fiscal years have been the most profitable in the organisation’s lottery’s history, even in the face of the challenges presented by the pandemic, and the Iowa Lottery has already achieved gross sales of nearly $78m in the first two months of FY2023.
“This strong start was propelled by a billion-dollar-plus Mega Millions grand prize jackpot that occurred in late July,” added Strawn.
“The Iowa Lottery FY2023 proceeds through August 2022 total $16.5m. This is 35% ahead of budgeted proceeds and 8% ahead of fiscal year 2022’s pace.”
However, due to the unpredictable nature of large jackpots in games, Strawn is remaining cautious on the chances of maintaining this momentum.
“That Mega Millions jackpot run at the very start of the fiscal year was quite a boost. I don’t suspect we will be able to maintain the pace that we saw in July from a sales perspective.”
Lottery Chief Revenue Officer John Ross says they have increased the number of stores selling lottery products by adding 57 Walmart stores.
But Ross has stressed the economy still remains a concern for the fiscal year ahead.
“The headwinds are real — and if you particularly look at the increase in the price of gasoline on average, for the state of Iowa, the relationships are basically inversely related.
“So particularly along the lines of scratch tickets, so if gas prices have gone up, sales of scratch tickets went down almost at the same proportion.”
