Last updated on August 31st, 2022 at 02:59 pm
If the Pennsylvania Lottery Commission has its way, the state may soon follow in the footsteps of other states like California and Minnesota in launching pumpside lottery ticket sales throughout the state.
Pennsylvania Lottery officials recently told a State Senate committee in Harrisburg that they have begun exploring play-at-the-pump lottery ticket availability.
The Lottery Commission also is looking into putting kiosks at grocery store checkout lines and state stores in an effort to sell more tickets. The expanded sales are being explored as a way to increase ticket sales in order to help meet the growing demand for senior citizens programs that the lottery funds.
However, not all convenience retailers are pleased with the move.
“You can already pre-pay at the pump, so…the customers don’t come into the store. If they were able to play the lottery out at the pump, they definitely wouldn’t come into the store, so that is going to drop business down,” retailer Alexandrea Jarmulowski told Pittsburgh’s KDKA News.
Some motorists are simply worried that the trial-and-error of learning a new process might slow things down at the pump as customers purchase lottery tickets at the pump for the first time.
In related lottery news, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) has reported that Congress is considering the Restoration of America’s Wire Act. The legislation addresses, in part, the legality of online lotteries. If lottery games were authorized for online sales, small business owners across the country—and their employees—could be adversely affected.
