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New Hampshire Junks Online Gaming Project

Posted on August 19th, 2010

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A plan by the New Hampshire Lottery Commission or NHLC to have their games put online has been scrapped. The body came to a conclusion that online gaming would be a “poor return on investment.” Charles McIntyre, the executive director of the state’s lottery admitted to the Associated Press that the plans to establish PlayNowNH, the online gaming site for the state, has been canceled by the commission after realizing that the games would not generate sufficient income. The online vendor for the state’s lottery commission for the moment is Intralot. Last year, Intralot finalized the acquisition of Cyberarts, a supplier of software based in California, to cement its position as a supplier of e-gaming options to lotteries of states in the US, as allowed by regulation.

In the PlayNowNH site proposed, residents of New Hampshire would have been allowed to bet in physical outlets up to $100 on various games which include speed bingo, super slots and New Hampshire poker. Players would then log in to the site and play the interactive version of the games so they could see if they had won with the ticket they bought. Once a ticket is sold, the prizes would already be determined, as the player would have already checked at the outlet where he bought the ticket if it is a winner or not. The interactive portion of the game is just to play the game itself and another manner of seeing if the ticket indeed won. Thus, the prizes would have been claimed in the lottery outlet already if the player indeed bought a winning ticket. The ticket buyer should be at least 18 years old.

McIntyre claims that although the venture would have generated modest revenue, a product such as PlayNowNH would have needed a lot of resources to be introduced and sustained, and the return on investment would not be too favorable at this time, especially with the existing conditions. Prior to the cancellation, the project has already been postponed from its original July 1 launch. The launching of the games were postponed after a number of New Hampshire lawmakers demanded that their approval of the project should also be considered, as apparently, they were not consulted. Particularly, the chairs of the Finance committees of both House and Senate criticized officials of the state lottery as the latter did not seek their approval for the project.

A defender of the state’s lottery officials was the attorney general, who unsuccessfully argued that the state’s lottery commission did not need to seek approval from the legislative branch to launch the online gaming plan since it was more or less similar to the current roster of games being offered. The interactive version of lottery games was pushed by the state lottery commission as a plan to target a younger set of players to support their line of products. With the method of using smart phones and computers to play the games, it was hoped that the younger demographic would find lottery gaming more appealing. With the cancellation of the online gaming project, the lottery organization of the state claim that it will turn its energies on plans to increase income through the promotion of the current games in the state’s roster, especially instant scratch tickets. The instant scratch tickets contract is currently being held by Scientific Games, a New York-based company which recently entered into an agreement with Playtech to develop SciPlay JV, a line of gaming products.

Despite the cancellation of New Hampshire to make their games online, a number of other US states continue to push for this project, Illinois and New York are some of the states currently considering a venture into products that allow for betting in cash, such as casino games and poker to be done online, as laws would allow.These options are currently being considered by states as a federal bill on the regulation of online gaming authored by Rep. Barney Frank includes an amendment that allows for state lotteries to offer games though the internet on a state-wide basis. These offerings would not be against the Wire Act of 1961. Moreover, state lotteries and their corresponding suppliers would not be required to have a federal license to do so.