Panama Lottery Considers Reform
After controversy and protest from lotto ticket sellers, Panama’s lottery may indeed undergo reform thanks to concerns from ticket buyers. Panama’s lottery overseer, the National Charity Lottery (LNB) had put a pause on the idea of selling electronic lotto tickets when ticket sellers responded badly. However, it seems plenty of lottery fans in Panama would actually like an electronic option, in part to avoid fraud in the lotto system.
Ticket buyers in Panama have complained about markups on illegally-sold tickets, prompting the lottery to reconsider its stance on electronic sales again. Towfiqu barbhuiya/Unsplash
What kind of fraud are ticket buyers afraid of?
Though there is a major ongoing fraud case in the lottery of the Dominican Republic, this is not the kind of situation that ticket buyers in Panama are concerned about. Instead, these lotto fans reporting to the LNB have claimed that lotto tickets are sold with markups in Panama every day.
As evidence, buyers provided photos and videos of tickets being sold on social media networks. It is clear from this documentation that these tickets are sold with a surcharge, which is indeed illegal. These buyers are tired of being overcharged for regular tickets and want a more fair system in place, enforced by Panama’s gaming authorities.
Buyers have reported illegal tickets being sold, in other words fake tickets or invalid entries. For these buyers, it seems that electronic ticket sales are a key solution, as buying online tickets from a trusted source would guarantee prices and validity, saving money and headaches overall.
How will the National Charity Lottery respond?
The LNB seems firmly on the side of lottery fans. They want to support them and equally want a modernization of the system in Panama. A former director of the organization, Omar Chen, shared that he believes the lotto will completely die out if some kind of reform is not introduced.
One concern of those against electronic ticket selling is whether it would target young people in a dangerous way, possibly creating problems of gaming addiction. Chen asserted that the lottery is mainly popular with an older age group — between 40 to 80 years old. He assured that younger people would not be targeted in any modernization of the game, but that it’s rather to update the lottery’s infrastructure to benefit all current users.
Despite Chen’s assertions, the LNB’s current director, Gloriela Del Río shared recently that the lotto will not move to electronic draws, and will try to find other ways to address these issues.
Del Río is under pressure from ticket sellers who gathered and protested last month when news about a possible electronic lotto were released. These sellers state that their livelihoods would be severely impacted, and that up to 60,000 people would be at risk of losing their jobs.
Therefore Measure 2022-09, which would allow the LNB to form a partnership with Scientific Games to offer electronic services to its users, has been put on hold indefinitely to appease sellers. Former director Chen finds this a shame as well. According to Chen, current ticket sellers could also be part of the electronic sales and could be the ones instigating such transactions, if the lottery moves to a full digital system.
He said that many millions of dollars are lost every month because of clandestine lotto practices. Apparently, some illegal groups also operate online lotteries that lure people in, but which are not approved by Panama officials and result in the loss of money for players.
