Puerto Rico Registers Lottery Growth
Puerto Rico’s Lottery Bureau, the agency in charge of all lottery activity on the island territory, has released data about its 2022 growth. Now that the end of the year is near, the agency has been able to assess how changes over the past year have affected sales, revenue and tax contributions and make the information available to the public. This will also help the bureau to make critical choices for proceeding with its work in the new year.
Puerto Rico has registered high profits for the lottery in 2022. dylan nolte/Unsplash
Lottery sales high in 2022
The data collected by the Puerto Rico Lottery Bureau shows a clear increase in sales from 2021 to 2022. Both the electronic lottery and traditional lottery grew by 14% according to an interview with local media from assistant secretary Lorna Huertas. Huertas also shared that the most popular games in this time period were Powerball, instant games and Pega 3.
One of the time periods under the microscope is that between the start of the year and the end of November 2022, since these are the completed months of the year that the bureau has data for. For this period of 11 months, the traditional lottery sold $219,449,302 USD of tickets.
In the same 11 month period, the electronic lottery in Puerto Rico sold $366,189,199.50 USD of various draws. Though electronic sales did surpass traditional sales at kiosks, it is interesting to note that the number of electronic ticket sales has not yet doubled traditional sales. With digital betting on the rise across the globe and within many verticals, Puerto Rico may be an outlier in the amount of traditional ticket buyers it still has.
The lottery of course paid out prize money as well. For electronic lotto, the amount was $232,831,483 USD total. $30,691,887 USD of this amount was just for three popular games: Powerball, Double Play and Power Play. The amount paid out for the traditional lottery has not yet been reported.
Though some year-on-year comparison data is already available, the real highlight will come at the end of December, when the final month of the year can also be tallied in. December is expected to be a high-performing month, with one of Puerto Rico’s biggest prizes raffled on Dec. 22. A reported 200,000 tickets have been printed for this prize, and 80% are already sold.
Huertas explained the popularity of this particular draw is simply the size of the prize, which is attractive to customers. As a US territory, those living in Puerto Rico can also take part in the US’s many prize draws, like Powerball. As the prize money increases, the tickets become much more popular, confirmed Huertas.
Changes since the pandemic
Many changes have been recorded since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic effectively shut down many brick-and-mortar industries temporarily. Lockdowns also affected gaming in Puerto Rico, including lotto sales. The data can be clearly seen when looking at 2020 or 2021 in comparison to now, when things have reached a relative normalcy again.
Puerto Rico’s casinos reported high profits and signs of recovery in 2022. They grew 38.89 percent in comparison to 2021. This growth was far greater than the territory’s general economy, in fact. Once year-on-year data is available for the lottery industry — likely in early 2023 — it is probable that significant increases will also be seen in comparison to the last two years.
