Indiana representatives have voted in favour of moving a bill to legalise online lottery in the state to the House floor after language surrounding casino legislation was removed.
Members of the House Public Policy Committee voted 9-3 in favour of HB 1078, which will allow the Indiana Lottery to offer eInstant games and online draw games.
The bill was initially proposed by Representative Ethan Manning of the Republican Party last year as a two-pronged piece of legislation to legalise both online lottery and online casino.
Although the prospect of launching an online casino market still has some broad support among Indiana representatives, Manning opted to remove it in order to quicken the bill’s passage through the House.
The Indiana congressional session ends in March, and Committee Chair Manning and other supporters of the bill, Steve Bartels and Cory Criswell, wanted to ensure it would meet this deadline.
However, the three Representatives remain keen to see casino language written back into it at a later date in a move which will likely be welcome across the American gaming space, particularly for the likes of Flutter, DraftKings and BetMGM, which have built up sizeable iCasino products over the past few years.
“While most of us in this room support that [dual] concept, we’ve tried that before and it didn’t work, so we’re trying something different to take a smaller bite at the apple,” Manning remarked at the bill’s Committee hearing on 6 January.
Rep Criswell added that he believes ‘iGaming and iLottery should be hand in hand’, though the legislation does make some distinctions between casino games and slot-style instant lottery games.
Path to casino still open
The bill includes a clause stating that digital lottery games that emulate ‘the play of slot machines’ through visualisations and features would not be allowed. However, it does also say that the decisions on allowing eInstant games would ultimately be left to the Indiana Lottery Commission.
“It modernises how the lottery products are sold, not necessarily what products are sold,” said Indiana Lottery Director of External Affairs, Jared Bond.
“There’s prohibitions on that as well, not exactly what the games would look like, but certainly what they can’t look like, as far as mimicking certain casino-style games.”
The prospect of online lottery being legalised in Indiana could be a big opportunity for Brightstar, the retail lottery technology partner of the state lottery, which has an extensive eInstants catalogue.
It could be a blow to couriers, however, which are active in Indiana state. The convenience of online lottery sales has the potential to interfere with lottery couriers’ business model, though the leadership of some courier firms have expressed confidence that iLottery and couriers can coexist.