Online lottery sales have proven a godsend for many US state lotteries during COVID-19, which makes it all the more inexplicable when states pass up the opportunity to introduce an online option.

On Wednesday, the Kentucky Lottery reported record sales of $1.2b in the 12 months ending June 30, a 6.2% improvement over the previous record set in fiscal 2019. The state’s share of this sum rose 2.8% year-on-year to $278.5m, also a new record.  

While scratch-off ticket sales ($741m, +10.7%) continued to be the dominant lottery product, the biggest percentage gain came via the online lottery, which shot up 68% year-on-year to $45m. That figure represents a more than eightfold increase since FY17, the first full year of the state’s online sales.

While the digital unit still accounts for only 3.7% of all sales, it was credited with helping the Lottery fill the void when COVID-19 forced many lottery retailers to shut. For instance, Keno sales were down 6.4% to $78.8m in FY20 thanks to the shutdown of all monitors for two months to minimize people clustering around them.