ON - “Online lottery sales take plunge, April’s figures were down almost $28 million in the wake over a report on insider wins”
By ANTONELLA ARTUSO, SUN MEDIA QUEEN’S PARK BUREAU
Wed, May 30, 2007, London Free Press
TORONTO — A one-month drop in “online” lottery ticket sales appears to have followed the release of Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin’s scathing report on insider wins at the provincial lottery corporation.
Cash sales for those lottery tickets last April, including Lotto 6/49 and Super 7 tickets, totalled $125.9 million, compared to $153.8 million in April 2006.
“Online” lotteries are those in which the customer or a computer picks numbers and they are fed into a terminal.
Sales of instant and sports lottery products were up, but revenues for the month were still down $16 million overall from the same period a year earlier.
OLG officials attributed the drop in sales to the fact Lotto Super 7 jackpots were significantly lower in April 2007.
NDP MPP Peter Kormos said the combination of lower sales in online lotteries, which were highlighted in Marin’s report, and the increase in scratch-and- win tickets point to a significant public response to the ombudsman’s revelations.
“The impression the OLG gives is it hasn’t learned a darn thing from the problems that were exposed by Marin,” Kormos said.
“The OLG carries on with its cynical business-as-usual style. The OLG is in a serious state of denial.”
Marin’s report concluded lottery players had been robbed of potentially tens of millions of dollars in winnings by unscrupulous retailers and the OLG turned a blind eye to the fraudulent goings-on.
The OLG says it is implementing the recommendations from Marin’s report and points to buoyant sales figures for 2006 when the media was reporting on potential problems with retailer fraud.
Even Premier Dalton McGuinty announced in late March that people were still buying lottery tickets.
But Marin’s report unleashed a torrent of negative media coverage and the issue dominated question period in the legislature.
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