Florida flirts with online lottery sales; Serbian Lottery conspiracy theories

The Florida Lottery has asked prospective technology vendors to demonstrate that they are capable of conducting business over the internet.

On Thursday, the Associated Press reported obtaining bid documents for the estimated $300m Lottery contract. Current vendor Gtech’s 10-year, $333m contract was supposed to expire this September but was recently extended to March 2017 or until a new vendor is chosen.

While the Lottery has yet to express any concrete intent to offer online sales of any form, it reportedly wants vendors to at least indicate that they have the capacity to sell tickets online, as well as via automatic teller machines (ATMs) and at gas station pumps. Spokeswoman Connie Barnes said the Lottery was only being thorough in considering “the full spectrum available technology being utilized in other states.”

There are currently only a handful of state lotteries plying their trade online, including Illinois, Georgia and Michigan. Some of these only offer online sales of draw tickets, while a daring few offer online instant-win scratch tickets, which critics have likened to slot machines. The Minnesota Lottery was the first to offer such groundbreaking products but the state’s luddite politicians torpedoed the online presence earlier this year.