Thailand considers digital lottery to beat overpriced vendors
With the biggest e-Commerce market in Southeast Asia, Thailand is planning to launch a new online platform to sell printed national lottery tickets in digital format to combat the high prices of some physical vendors.
According to a member and spokesman for the Government Lottery Office, Thanawat Polvichai, the alternative digital lottery will be among the options offered to the board for consideration at a meeting last week.
Another three options: lotto, pictorial lottery tickets, and two- and three-digit lottery tickets.
To focus on the younger generation and catch up with the neighbouring countries of Laos and Vietnam in offering digital lotteries, Thanawat said existing registered vendors will not be affected by the new change but the proportion of tickets and will likely reset the price to 80 baht to eliminate overpriced vendors.
After Covid-19 hit Thailand, people lost their jobs and turned to selling lottery tickets, and many of them had to acquire tickets at inflated costs.
Unregistered sales amounted to between 5% and 10% of the 100 million tickets generated in previous years. In contrast, the number of registered and unregistered lottery vendors has more than doubled from around 200,000 in 2015 to 400,000 today.
SOURCE: Bangkok Post
