Next year, Kansas will become the most recent state to launch a full-featured online lottery, including draw ticket sales and e-Instant games. The launch will also mark the US debut of Pollard Banknote’s new line of digital instant games. The North American debut coincidentally also came this week, with the games’ launch in the Canadian province of Alberta.
While US iGaming expansion has faltered in recent years, online lotteries are starting to catch on. For one thing, there is less public resistance to the lottery than there is to other forms of gambling and fewer concerns about damage to retail casino revenue or jobs. Moreover, implementing an online lottery often requires only a regulatory change and doesn’t need to go through the legislature at all.
Kansas is one of several US jurisdictions that have discovered that their lottery commission could implement an iLottery with only a rules change. North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Washington, DC, have also recently taken the same path.
The Kansas Lottery’s Executive Director Stephen Durrell confirmed that no new legislation was needed in a comment to our colleagues at PlayiLottery:
Giving our players the ability to purchase our products in this fashion is something they have wanted for a very long time. We are excited to be able to provide new games and purchasing options, safely and securely, for players in the state. Just as we were pleased to bring Kansas sports betting through mobile applications, we are happy to now be able to provide players this new opportunity under existing law.
Even in states that have needed to amend their laws, the change has typically been small, often requiring only the insertion of the words “including over the internet” to the sales authorization language.
Pollard’s Foray Into Independent iLottery Operations
Pollard Banknote is a Canadian company that has existed for over a century. However, it was a printing business for most of that history. In the 1970s, it invested in high-security printing techniques, thus the reference to banknotes in its name. In the following decade, that led it into the lottery-printing business, which eventually became the company’s focus.
It now powers over 60 retail lotteries worldwide, including those for many US states.
The Kansas launch will mark the first time in the US that it will directly supply e-Instant games that it has developed in-house. However, its move into the online lottery space has been ongoing for many years.
Its first step in that direction came in 2014. That year, it struck a deal with iLottery supplier NeoGames to bring the Michigan Lottery online. That effort proved to be an early success story for online lotteries in the US and quickly led to a joint venture between the two companies. NeoPollard, as the partnership is known, has become one of the biggest names in the US iLottery space.
Last year, the two companies signed a new long-term operating agreement. Among the new terms was the option for either partner to pursue new iLottery opportunities independently.
That has allowed Pollard to leverage the capabilities it obtained by acquiring Novomatic AG in 2021. Those include the Pollard Catalyst Gaming Platform to power iLotteries and, now, Pollard Digital Games Studio. To date, the new studio has 17 games in its catalog.
When it launches next year, the Kansas online lottery will offer a selection of those games (and perhaps new releases in the interim), plus direct online draw ticket sales.
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