The battle between lottery couriers and licensed gaming operators is heating up in Texas where the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas is asking the Senate State Affairs committee to investigate the services. Online lottery couriers, the letter suggests, are providing unlicensed gambling to players and need to be banned outright, attorneys for the Kickapoo maintain.
In Texas, online lottery couriers purchase lottery tickets on behalf of their customers and post digital copies on their website. Customers can then access the tickets through the courier’s site. The digital couriers make their money on commissions charged on lottery winnings and site deposits. That, according to the Kickapoos, amounts to an online purchase of a lottery ticket, which means the couriers are essentially selling lottery tickets and should be regulated accordingly.
“Rather, they provide comprehensive online gaming experiences to their users that have the ability to mimic otherwise unlawful internet gaming. This is an express attempt to work around the State’s prohibition on internet gaming, and achieving this end goal — i.e., unregulated internet gaming — is the end goal for many of these lottery courier services,” the letter stated.
Tribal gaming operators, who are frequently in geographically isolated locations, are particularly sensitive to encroachment on their markets. This sensitivity is especially increased when that encroachment is perceived to come from online operators who are burdened with neither brick-and-mortar locations nor state regulations. “At a minimum, any law purporting to allow lottery courier services in Texas must ensure that such services are true couriers by mandating they deliver the physical lottery tickets to players immediately upon purchase and prior to the ticket’s drawing,” Jack Nelson, the letter’s author stated.
At of this writing, the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee has not commented on the Kickappo’s request.