Operator News
US – With casinos closed West Virginia Lottery surpasses expectations
By Phil - 21 July 2021
The West Virginia Lottery generated sales of $1.2bn from July of last year to June 30, exceeding its aims for the year despite other betting and gambling sectors being wiped out by the effects of COVID-19.
The target set for the year was a total of $983m. The increase was driven by traditional lottery games including Powerball and Mega Millions whilst scratch-off tickets generated their best ever total of $249m. Video lottery also experienced an increase , coming in at $480m in revenue.
Lottery Director John Myers said: “I think because people couldn’t go to the casinos, they were going to the smaller venues in order to play the machines and therefore we saw an increase in revenue in the LVL side. Each year we set a goal to exceed one billion dollars in total sales for the lottery. This year we ended up at $1.17bn. We still met the goal with the pandemic in place. It created a lot of challenges from the standpoint of the casinos were running, not necessarily shutdown over the last year, but with restrictions that kept them from having a full amount of people on the floor.
