BOSTON — The catalog of online games that will be available from the Massachusetts Lottery later this summer is coming into clearer view as regulators gave the green light to virtual scratch tickets and two new daily draw games.
The Lottery Commission voted Tuesday to authorize regulatory amendments that Executive Director Mark William Bracken said are necessary to set rules and regulations for so-called iLottery games conducted online.
After years of lobbying for the expansion, the Lottery plans to begin offering some of its products online and through its app this summer, marking an additional widening of the state’s expanded gaming landscape.
The package of regulatory amendments approved Tuesday authorizes two existing draw games — Megabucks and Mass Cash — to also be available via the iLottery platform. They also authorize products that will be sold exclusively through the iLottery system: electronic instant-win games similar to scratch tickets, and new three- and four-digit daily numbers games called Mass 3 and Mass 4.
“Mass 3 is a three-digit daily numbers game where a player selects three numbers and a play type (e.g., exact order, any order), and the player also has an option to play the Wicked Bonus ball which offers separate prizes,” General Counsel Gregory Polin wrote in a memo circulated to commissioners ahead of Tuesday’s vote. “Similarly, Mass 4 is a four-digit daily numbers game where a player selects four numbers and a play type, and the player also has an option to play the Wicked Bonus ball which offers separate prizes.”
Retailers for years have counted on scratch ticket and numbers game players to visit stores to buy tickets, and those options will remain available although the new online games will let players more easily purchase tickets.
The regulations say specific game prices, rules and prize structures are to be laid out in individual administrative bulletins to be issued by Bracken. The regulations also give Bracken the power to start sales of the two new games “on a date to be determined by the Director in their discretion.”
Polin wrote that the regulations before commissioners Tuesday would “make necessary updates to the Introduction section regarding iLottery-related revenues and prize payouts; address improper use of iLottery Player Accounts; and provide the procedure for claiming prizes for tickets and games that were purchased through the iLottery Platform.”
The House and Senate included online Lottery authorization in the fiscal year 2025 budget that Gov. Maura Healey signed in the summer of 2024. Lottery officials initially said they planned to launch their “iLottery” in late 2025, then bumped the timeline back to an April 2026 start of online sales and since then until “the summer of 2026” with no revenue expected from the new stream until the budget year that begins July 1.
The Lottery has not provided a specific launch date, but Polin suggested Tuesday that it is no further out than the 90 days it takes some regulations to take effect. He said he “will need to file these as an emergency to meet our launch date.”
In March, the Lottery Commission authorized a slate of regulatory changes dealing mostly with age verification and geolocation. The public hearing on those changes was last week and Bracken said “we did not have anyone comment on them … so we seem to be moving in the right direction with these regs.”
Polin added that the deadline for written comments on those regulations was Friday and that he had not seen any comments come in by Thursday.
Online sales are estimated to bring in $70 million in net profit in the first year of operation, with revenue flowing into the Early Education and Care Operational Grant Fund. Treasurer Deborah Goldberg previously laid out her expectations for online Lottery revenue: more than $180 million by year three, more than $230 million in year five, and almost $360 million in year 10.
The five-year contract that the commission approved last summer with Aristocrat Interactive for an online lottery platform is structured around a revenue-sharing model that has not previously been used here, Bracken said, with a maximum of 5% of revenue flowing to Aristocrat. That contract, the company said last summer, starts July 1.
Bracken also walked the commission through the agency’s performance for April during Tuesday’s meeting.
The $564.3 million in sales last month was down $4.9 million or 0.9%, he said, though the Lottery saw a $3.3 million increase in net profit for the month due to differences in prize payout volumes and rates.
Lottery sales are down $52.9 million or 1.1% through the first 10 months of fiscal year 2026, Bracken said. He added that the Lottery is running ahead of last year’s profit pace by about $6.3 million. Goldberg has said the Lottery is on track to return $1.05 billion in fiscal 2026 for the Legislature to use as local aid and she has projected the same total for fiscal 2027 despite the introduction of online sales.
Colin Young is the deputy editor for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach him at colin.young@statehousenews.com.