In an episode of the iGaming Daily podcast, the SBC Media team came together for an in-depth review of the lottery drama unfolding in Texas.
Ted Menmuir, SBC’s Editor-at-Large, was joined by Ted Orme-Claye, SBC News and Lottery Daily Editor, and Tom Nightingale, Senior Journalist at SBC Americas, for what turned out to be a nuanced conversation involving politics and and predictions about the future of lottery couriers not only in Texas, but in North America as a whole.
Kicking off the discussion, Ted Orme-Claye reminded the audience about how the issue around the Texas Lottery gained traction back in 2023, when a group of wealthy individuals made a bulk purchase to buy almost all available ticket combinations, winning the $95m jackpot.
Then, earlier this February, another case added fuel to the fire – this time building pressure on lottery couriers in Texas after a $83.5m jackpot was won through a ticket purchased via a lottery courier, from a retail shop that the said courier actually owned.
“There’s going to be an impact of this felt outside Texas as well, because lottery couriers are quite a nationwide phenomenon in the US,” Orme-Claye continued.
Exploring gambling’s relationship with politics in the story, Nightingale chipped in by saying: “Texas is a bit of a funny state when it comes to gambling. We’ve talked about the idea of sports betting coming to Texas for years. The roadblocks just seem to be innumerable really.
“On the lottery side of things, I was reading something last night about how allegations of corruption around the Texas Lottery date back to the late 1990s.”
Political theatre
The latest developments saw Texas Senator Bob Hall drafting a proposal to abolish the lottery altogether, but this could also be nothing more than ‘political theatre’ on its part.
Nightingale continued: “There’s always a bit of a political theater going on. Since we started talking about doing this podcast, Senator Bob Hall has filed another bill in addition to the one that he filed last week to abolish the lottery.
“He’s now filed another one that pulls back a little bit and says actually, maybe let’s not abolish the lottery if that is sort of too big a pill for the Texas legislature to swallow.”
The Senator has now relaxed mentions for the lottery commission’s abolition, and has instead started to explore the idea of keeping lottery games but moving their oversight to the Department of Licensing and Regulation.