Lotto NZ reveals lockdown sales, massive revenue hit

Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the 15 new cases are made up of six confirmed cases and nine probable cases. Twelve people are in hospital, three are in ICU and two are in a critical condition.

The good news for the Lotteries Commission: a ton more people have signed up to play Lotto online since the start of the lockdown.

During the lockdown so far, some 90,000 have registered to buy virtual tickets via the MyLotto website.

"This has meant sales on MyLotto are over double of what we would normally see at comparative jackpot levels," a Lotto NZ spokeswoman says.

The bad: That's not nearly enough to offset ticket sales lost after retailers were required to halt ticket sales.

Lotto NZ expected to take a hit. "We expected to see a significant drop in sales during the lockdown, as we would normally see around 75 per cent of our sales come from retail stores, and 25 per cent online," the spokeswoman says.

SIGN UP TO OUR COVID-19 NEWSLETTER.
SIGN IN OR REGISTER, THEN SELECT TOP NEWS STORIES

In the event, sales have nearly halved.

"Based on the five draws during lockdown between March 28 and April 11, on average we sold 54 per cent of the tickets we would usually sell at comparative jackpot levels," the spokeswoman says.

That, in turn, means jackpots build much more slowly.

Lotto NZ had total revenue of $1.12 billion in 2019 between Lotto, Instant Kiwi, Keno and other games (and a cost of sales of $785 million).

That works out to $93m per month - meaning four week's of Level 4 lockdown will see it miss out on around $42.78m in gross revenue as a small army of punters snub the online option.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

That's bad news for a number of organisations. Lotto NZ is a significant funder of Sport New Zealand, the NZ Film Commission and Creative NZ, the spokeswoman says, "And our funding also supports organisations like StarJam, Heart Kids, Mobility Dogs, Bellyful, Coastguard – to name a few."

"We know a lot of our customers prefer to have that 'golden ticket' in their hands, so we will be working closely with retailers once the lockdown ends to get Lotto counters in stores up and running again," the spokeswoman says.

That could still be some time off.

In a briefing earlier today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said there would still be a ban on face-to-face retail when NZ transitions to Level 3.

The Government is due to make an announcement on the timing next Monday.

TO READ THE HERALD'S FULL CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE CLICK HERE

‌

‌