Lotto New Zealand has outlined plans for a new technology platform after experiencing disruptions due to surging demand for online lottery products.

Lotto New Zealand has recorded nearly 200,000 new online registrations since COVID-19 related restrictions came into force in March, with online sales last week accounting for 40 per cent of total lottery sales compared to 25 per cent prior to the lockdown.

“To support the move to online play, and the big increase in the number of people playing online, Lotto NZ is making a substantial investment in the upgrade of MyLotto,” said NZ Lottery chief executive Chris Lyman.

“While this work is underway we have been making interim improvements. However, regrettably there have been some issues on MyLotto. This has in turn resulted in some pretty poor customer experiences, and for that I sincerely apologise.”

Lyman added that the lottery expects to complete upgrades to the existing MyLotto website and app by early 2021, with a new gaming platform scheduled for deployment in 2024, including the full replacement of the back-end gaming system that supports MyLotto, as well as all terminals in retail stores.

“We have significantly more people buying tickets online now than ever before. Nearly 200,000 people have registered to play online since 25 March – to put this into perspective, this is the number of new online players we would expect over a two-year period, not four months,” Lyman said.

“We sold around 2.5 million tickets for [Friday’s] draw, and over a million of those were online. This is the most tickets we have ever sold online. This slowed down our processing significantly, and unfortunately led to delays.”

Gaming Intelligence