The Lottery of Texas, once won, has the second chance with a new agency

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On September 1, the Texas Lottery Commission, 32, will be abolished, ending the agency designed to manage one of the few legal forms of play in Texas: the lottery operation managed by the State.

Most of the employees of the Commission, however, will present themselves for work at the same office and in the same jobs to support the same games – it is only now, it will be the Department of Texas of Licenses and the Regulation to which they will be denounced. Under a new state law, TDLR will resume the operation of the $ 8 billion operation originally proposed by Gov. Ann Richards as a way to generate income for Texas public schools.

“One thing that plays in this area that facilitates the transition from a little point of view is that no one is really moving at the moment,” said the Lottery transition director Glenn Neal. “Right now, this is the integration of people into a new agency, but physically, they will remain more or less where they are at the moment.”

The change in leadership was a compromise after the Texas Lottery, recently mired in controversy, almost ended during the regular legislative session of the State. Several legislators have expressed their concern about two dollars of several million dollars won in 2023 and 2025, which sparked surveys and resignations. Directed by Lieutenant-Governor Dan Patrick, the legislators accused the Lottery commission of having looked at a money laundering program and illegal online ticket sales.

These concerns finally merged into the Senate 3070 bill, a bill which announced the end of the lottery committee and the transfer of games to TDLR and established new railings aimed at preventing the illegal game.

The will of the Legislative Assembly

The TDLR is no stranger to the legislature which gives new agencies or responsibilities, said Courtney Arbor, its executive director. TDLR has 25 different programs under its surveillance since 2015, ranging from midwives to measure the fuel which extends over 919,000 different licenses which it supervises.

However, the lottery is its own company, and the largest TDLR transition has been responsible for manipulating. With nearly 300 employees, acquisition is an increase of 50% compared to around 545 current employees from the ministry. The addition of the lottery will also multiply the department’s budget by six times because it manages the surveillance of more than 20,000 lottery retailers. TDLR will also supervise state -owned bingo games.

For those who seek to buy lottery tickets, TDLR’s stewardship will not bring notable changes – but SB 3070 brings a series of new regulations on state games. These include stricter restrictions on the number of tickets can be purchased by one person and the criminalization of lottery letters that sell online printed lottery tickets, the two things that the lottery commission had been examined for not having reinstated in the years before.

The restrictions are used after a single group in 2023 bought 99% of the 26 million tickets of 26 million tickets from the Lotto Texas Draw games to win a jackpot of $ 95 million with the help of stores detained or affiliated with email companies. The legislators accused the Lottery Commission of having helped to whiten money through “bulk purchase”.

The legislators also said that online sales tickets for mail was illegal under the current law before launching a successful campaign during the session to prohibit services. Over the five years, they have been authorized to operate in the state, stores belonging to couriers have quickly become the best -selling ticket retailers, as opponents said that their digital market at the state level had provided an unfair advantage to reach customers.

Tackle a two -year drop

Arbor declared that she had met the author of SB 3070, Senator Bob Hall, R-EDGEWOOD, as well as the office of governor Greg Abbott, who was “very interested” in the way the new law will be implemented. The TDLR transition team also met the stakeholders, from state retailers to dedicated players. Such a meeting was with Dawn Nettles, the longtime guard dog of the Texas lottery and the publisher of Lottoreport.com.

Nettles, which has been a fierce critic of the Lottery Commission for decades, said that it was carefully optimistic about the manipulation of the ministry, but that the staff is not yet completely advised by the “ins and outs” of the state games. Beyond the public examination and new regulations, Nettles fears that the first challenge of TDLR will reach the recent underperformance of the games.

“They must make rules changes, but they cannot spend the first day and attack everything that is wrong with the lottery,” said Nettles. “Their objective above all better assess the number of prints offered and how it really harms sales.”

With the exercise ended at the end of August, the Texas Lottery is currently in the process of end with around $ 500 million in less income than the 2024 financial year, the second consecutive year of decline for the game. Significant powerball declines and sales of scratch tickets have largely contributed to the decline, according to a weekly report by the lottery committee published on Wednesday.

The lighting of sales has also decreased the amount of income provided to the state education fund, the main reason why the legislators said they had chosen not to end the lottery. The lottery had provided approximately $ 1.4 billion at the School Fund Foundation until July, according to data from the controller office, a drop of 11% compared to the same period last year and further from the $ 2 billion record in 2023 dollars.

Nettles has awarded the drop in sales to the decrease in the frequency to which games will pay major prices. Arbor recently attended his first meeting with lottery directors from other states who also have a drop in sales and have discussed the offer of new games or the ways to play in order to re -engage customers. The change of hands of Texas Lottery is also a new opportunity to look for what the players want, she said.

“What I learned about lottery players is that they like change,” said Arbor. “They like new ticket options. They like new drawing options. And therefore staff here meet regularly to talk about strategies and how to continue to offer options for players who will encourage the game for those who want to play.”

The Sunset review to come

TDLR’s incoming control can already start on the right foot. Only two weeks in 2025 succeeded in weekly sales equivalent in 2024: once in January, before the legislative session, and again at the end of August, two weeks before the transfer of the lottery.

Most of the game’s controversies have also finished or fell from public view. While the office of the Ministry of Public Security and the Office of the Attorney General Ken Paxton both announced investigations on the lottery committee and the couriers in February, none has provided update since these announcements. The prosecutor’s office did not respond to several requests for comments on the question of whether their investigations were still underway, and a DPS press release said they had not been able to disclose the details of a current investigation.

A large part of the staff currently with the lottery commission will remain on, but several of the senior officials, including former executive director Ryan Mindell, resigned before the SB 3070 SB. Sergio Rey, acting executive director of the lottery commission and former financial director, will continue to serve as an interim executive director for the lottery and the Bingo de Bienfaissance for TDLR.

The lottery committee also recently settled a trial of a woman who was not paid for her jackpot of $ 83.5 million because she bought the winning ticket through a lottery letter. The commission agreed to pay the woman after months of maintenance that they had to wait for the completion of the investigations before doing so.

To establish long -term success and enlighten their decisions, TDLR is responsible for establishing a lottery advisory committee and a Bingo Advisory Committee. Earlier in the month, members of the Texas license and regulation committee voted to adopt emergency rules in order to establish conditions for these committees so that they can start to meet quarterly as soon as the games are transferred.

The emergency rules will not take effect until September 10 and they would remain in place before January 8, said Derek Burkhalter, lawyer general general of TDLR, at a meeting of the August Licenses Committee. A standard regulatory process will also take place to establish the permanent rules. The appointments will begin to take place at the next meeting of the license committee on September 4.

The legislators will have to weigh the performance of TDLR in 2029, because SB 3070 requires that the State’s advisory committee, which performs audits of the state agencies, then examines the ministry’s lottery operation. Without legislation adopted, the lottery would be completely abolished on September 1, 2029.

Nettles said that the long -term success of the lottery is not only important for the reputation of TDLR or state revenues in schools that legislators are looking for. The local economic impact of winners who spend their millions – and the importance of games for Texans – is a much more difficult advantage to measure.

“I told TDLR this: whatever he earns a player, anyway, he turns around and gives him back,” said Nettles.

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