Online lottery tickets could go on sale soon

Minnesota State Lottery players could be scratching off virtual tickets on its website by the end of this month, despite questions over whether it's legal.

Minnesota would be the first state in the nation to offer the games online and officials hope to have the product ready for the market in the next couple of weeks, lottery director Ed Van Petten said.

The agency, he added, is being "extra cautious," but "everybody involved is just totally convinced that we have the authority to do this under the existing law."

Opponents, however, reacted with alarm Thursday, saying the online games aren't legal under the state constitutional amendment that authorized the lottery in 1988.

Virtual scratch-offs, they say, are a major expansion of state gambling that will spur more problem gambling and drain more money from the poor. They also say it's a bad way for the state to raise money.

The new games break with Minnesota's unspoken, restrained approach to state-sponsored gambling, said Brian Rusche, executive director of the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition.

"I think we've lived for several decades with some kind of tacit understandings about how aggressive the lottery should be in its marketing," Rusche said. "Up until recently, they've kind of shown some forbearance, and that kind of understanding seems to be eroding."

He and others opposed to expanding gambling called for more caution, time and legislative oversight for the lottery's online expansion plans. The idea has already drawn some concern among lawmakers, after the lottery outlined its plans for online scratch off games at a House commerce committee meeting in October.

Lottery officials, however, note they already offer the Powerball game online on a subscription basis and say they're on sound legal footing to expand online offerings.

The lottery has been selling draw games on the Internet, including Powerball and MegaMillions, since 2010. Gamblers can set up a subscription service that buys tickets on a regular basis. The games still happen off line, in the same drawing that traditional retail tickets use. It remains a small fraction of sales, less than half of one percent, according to lottery officials.

The new online scratch offs will also be familiar. Van Petten said. "It'll look very similar, not the same as a scratch ticket," he said. "But you just click on the ticket with your mouse and cursor to reveal the numbers or the symbols, whichever is present that would normally be under the latex, which then reveals under the screen."

While there aren't any states offering the games in the U.S. right now, a number of Canadian provinces are using them, he added.

"There are total worldwide 23 lotteries that offer instant electronic tickets," Van Petten said. "There hasn't been one jurisdiction where there have been any problems develop. Every one of them shows stronger sales at the brick and mortar retailers than the jurisdictions that do not have them."