The Texas Lottery has escaped abolition but will continue to operate under a heightened level of scrutiny and observation over the next two years.
Senate Bill 3070 was passed by the Texas State Senate last week, abolishing the Texas Lottery Commission (TLC) and transferring regulatory responsibility for the state lottery on to another department.
Replacing the TLC, which has overseen state lottery activity in Texas since both it and the lottery’s foundation in 1991, is the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation.
SB 3070 was one of two bills proposed by Senator Bob Hall of the Republican Party, the other being the more far-reaching SB 1998, which sought to completely abolish the Texas Lottery.
He would later introduce SB 3070 as a more moderate option, perhaps having recognised that legislative appetite for abolishing the Texas Lottery and the average $2bn in revenue it brings in each year would be rather limited.
While the Texas Lottery has secured a lifeline, it will continue to face political pressure over the coming years. This will likely revolve around integrity, with concerns around this the main impetus for much of the legislative debate.
Lt Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, commented that the Texas Lottery has been given a ‘two-year lease on life’ after SB 3070’s approval in the State Senate. He also commented on Texans enthusiasm for the lottery, perhaps too noting the revenue it brings in.
“They like their Lotto and they like their scratch-off games. So, we’re going to fix it,” he said.
As noted above, the biggest concerns about the Texas Lottery raised in Congress relate to its integrity. Concerns were first raised after a buyout incident in 2023, in which over 99% of winning combinations were bought by a group of individuals to claim a $95m jackpot.
This was followed by an incident in February 2025 in which a woman won a $83.5m jackpot from a ticket purchased via online lottery courier Jackpocket.com, bought at a retailer owned by the firm’s parent company, sports betting giant DraftKings. This introduced the topic of lottery couriers into the wider debate around integrity in the Texas Lottery.
The approval of SB 3070 and dissolution of the TLC – which had faced stinging criticism from state legislators in recent weeks – seems to have cleared up much of this debate, at least for the next two years.
The issue of lottery couriers, and who regulated these firms, remains to be addressed, however. The TLC had moved to ban couriers, but now it is disbanded; this decision may need to be taken on by the Commission of Licensing and Regulation.
Lottery couriers had been fighting back against the proposed ban under the umbrella of the Coalition of Texas Lottery Couriers (CTLC), with Lotto.com even going as far to mount a legal challenge against the Commission’s decision.