September 23, 2026
In the first full month they were available, bettors spent nearly $140 million on online lottery games through the Massachusetts Lottery platform that launched in late July.
The first full month of the Massachusetts Lottery Online system generated $139.4 million in sales and an estimated profit of $10.6 million, Lottery chief Mark William Bracken told the Lottery Commission on Tuesday.
Almost all of the online sales ($137 million) were on “eInstant” games, and Bracken also said the month’s online profit is “realistically … somewhat closer to $8 million once the August bills get paid.”
The roughly $540 million in August sales at traditional Lottery retailers was down $30 million from last August. Bracken said that left overall unadjusted sales for the month $109.3 million above last year’s total. And an estimated $16.2 million decrease in profits at retail last month meant the agency turned a smaller profit than in August 2025, by about $5.5 million.
Not all Lottery games are available online and Lottery officials have said their online offerings are meant to be different enough from traditional retail games to avoid cannibalization of sales. Bracken alluded to that concern when he noted that Powerball sales last month “were down … primarily due to the jackpot. It’s not like those sales were transferred over to the Powerball online.”
Through the first two months of fiscal year 2027, Bracken said Lottery sales are up $113 million combined (despite a $26.4 million decline at retail) and its estimated profit is up just more than $26 million ($10 million attributed to online games). There was no discussion at Tuesday’s meeting of the criticism the Lottery received from national gambling opponents who say the new online offerings are “flagrantly utilizing design features that deliberately exploit and capitalize off young users’ unique vulnerabilities.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, Bracken announced an expansion of the Lottery’s retail universe and the commission approved an expansion of the Lottery’s online realm.
Bracken said the Lottery “actually just got Walmart for the first time as an agent location … over 50 Walmart locations across the commonwealth.”
“We were never able to get Walmart in Massachusetts to sign up to be a Lottery agent. So we are in the process of installing machines and doing agent promotions at those stores,” he said. “And then the other exciting news on our expansion is that we were able to get Walgreens as a retail agent as well … every single Walgreens in the commonwealth is now going to be a Lottery agent as well.”
And following a unanimous vote of the commission, Bracken said a new online game in which players wager on virtual horse racing events that represent drawings conducted by a random number generator, “fingers crossed, is going to be launching online next month.”
“What we will be offering is a game called Post Time Payout, which is a virtual horse racing game … the winners are picked by random number generator, and instead of showing bouncing balls, they’re shown as racing horses. It has nothing to do with live racing or anything like that,” he said.
The game the Lottery plans to launch is similar to a gambling activity the House backed in its economic development bill this summer, but different in a central way. In the Lottery’s game, the outcome is determined by a random number generator and it is revealed in the style of a horse race. The game regulations approved Tuesday say that the “revealing of the drawing outcome and the display of the virtual sporting event do not determine whether the VSport Game wager is a winning wager.”
The House in July unanimously approved an amendment to authorize racing licensees, chiefly the simulcast centers at Suffolk Downs and Raynham Park, to begin taking wagers on “historical horse races,” or real, completed races that are replayed on terminals. The pre-race odds and results are all the same as the actual races, but identifying names and features are changed so bettors do not know what historical race they are betting on.
