Buying lottery online is no longer something atypical. The possibility of choosing your birthday number or receiving it directly at home has revolutionized the work of lotteries, immersed in a profound transformation of their businesses and increasingly linked to logistics rather than window operations. The commissions charged by the points of sale, “pyrrhic” in the opinion of their owners, have led many of them to manage orders through web platforms other than SELAE, the public body in charge of managing games of chance.
The fears that the lotteries had in 2015 with the online sales portal launched by the managing entity of the State Lotteries and Gambling (SELAE) have vanished. Together with the Spanish National Organization for the Blind (ONCE), it is the only operator authorized to sell lottery in Spain, either in person, by telephone or online. The liberalization carried out in 2011 opened the hand of sports betting and allowed the entry of new operators, but kept all lottery gaming activity at the national level in the hands of the State.
In a subsequent Royal Decree, the framework was established for the operator to grant authorizations to other natural or legal persons who were not part of the external marketing network, but an exception appeared: “Third parties who, under the exclusive responsibility of the managers of the aforementioned external network, could market lottery products in accordance with the customary uses and customs”.
Rise of the websites to buy lottery online
In recent years there have been several platforms that have been developed around the bur of electronic commerce and the freedom that this exception offers. These types of platforms act as mere intermediaries between the lottery and the client. In exchange for a commission, they offer very useful management systems for the lottery’s day-to-day work, since they allow them to control their stock, simplify reservations for the syndicates, so that customers can purchase the lottery to receive it at home or even collect winning tickets.
Until now, the Government had not developed the legal framework that allows the sale by these authorized third parties, but the spectacular increase in internet lottery sales has made the Executive change its mind. Between 2019 and 2021, the volume of lottery purchases made with credit cards grew by 85%, from 209 to 387 million euros.
Although more than half (204 million) were sales carried out on the network managed by SELAE, the rest remained outside the control of the State. We are talking about more than a third of the total: 136 million euros in 2021, almost double that of the previous year. This growth in the number of transactions through electronic channels is in line with the increase in points of sale that use this channel, which has doubled in two years, from 409 to 829.
Avoid sale to minors
The virtualization of the lottery client is not liked by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, which considers that with online sales the control exercised by lotteries over minors or people who are prohibited from betting is lost: “It increases the risk that people who, due to their condition, subjectively they shouldn’t participate in gambling activities they can.”
The proposal of the General Directorate for the Regulation of Gambling, under the command of Alberto Garzón, includes that these platforms will have to register in a registry and receive authorization from SELAE to operate. In exchange, it must promote the lottery administrations that provide the tickets, verify the age to avoid purchases by minors or verify that users are not registered in the game’s self-ban registry.
At the moment, this new regulation is in the public consultation phase, with which the Government intends to know the interests of the affected sectors through the pleadings process. Consulted in this regard, from SELAE they do not enter to assess the regulations and prefer to wait for it to be formalized to assess it and act in line with the demands of the lotteries.
