Lottery slips up as slips run low
Facing the same kind of supply chain crunch that has impacted other businesses, the Massachusetts Lottery is looking into its options for dealing with a possible shortage of bet slips.
Lottery Executive Director Michael Sweeney told the Lottery Commission on Tuesday that a bet slip provider warned the Lottery of potential delays with its next and future shipments.
Since being notified, he said, the Lottery has reviewed its existing stock and has begun to “very strongly manage” distribution of its inventory.
“This is a direct quote from one of our bet slip providers: ‘I’ve never seen this before. The paper company cannot fill my order and they are not accepting new orders.’ And obviously, without them getting the raw supply of paper, they are having difficulty meeting the needs of their customers like the Mass. Lottery,” Sweeney said. “This does have the potential to impact operations for Keno and other draw games.”
The pandemic and economic recovery have had significant impacts on production, shipping rates and consumer spending patterns.
The White House reported in June that the ratios that measure how many days of current sales businesses and retailers could support out of existing inventories hit record lows in March, and that “36 percent of small businesses reported delays with domestic suppliers, with delays concentrated in manufacturing, construction, and trade sectors.”
The Lottery is waiting for a shipment of non-recycled paper and has its quality assurance team “teed up” to immediately start testing whether the non-recycled product could meet the Lottery’s game integrity needs, Sweeney said. If it can, the Lottery plans to begin ordering non-recycled paper to use for its bet slips instead of the recycled paper it typically uses.
“At least as of Monday, we were being told by our contractual providers that right now being able to fill orders with non-recycled paper would be easier and quicker than the potential delays we’re seeing for recycled paper,” he said.
Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, who oversees the Lottery and chairs the Lottery Commission, pointed out that the headache of the supply chain problem might be eased if the Lottery were not so reliant on in-person sales.
The issue, she said is “tied into the challenges for point of sale, brick-and-mortar type of operations.”
Goldberg has been pushing for the ability to sell Lottery products online for years.
Sweeney also reported to the Lottery Commission on Tuesday that August sales were up $40.4 million from August 2020 as sales of nearly every product rose and that the month featured an estimated $8.7 million increase in profit.