Loto-Québec plans to sell self-service tickets

Loto-Québec hopes to sell lottery tickets much earlier using self-service checkouts at grocery stores and other retail outlets in the province.

In an interview with News magazine, during the presentation of its results for the second quarter, the president and chief executive officer of the state-owned company, Jean-Francois Bergeron, admitted that the idea had already been under consideration for some time. And, since August, such terminals are already being tested at its headquarters in Montreal.

“The idea is not to replace kiosks found in shopping malls or even ticket sales counters found in convenience stores or grocery stores,” he said. But instead of automatically adjusting to changing current practices.

That’s the ticket?

Since August, the pilot project has allowed Lotto-Québec to evaluate how it can integrate the sale of lottery tickets into self-service checkouts at grocery stores without slowing down traffic flow.

Have you ever wondered if you should donate to charity when paying for your groceries? Will the day come when you’re even asked if you’d like to give yourself a lottery ticket to complete your grocery shopping?

Prohibited to minors

For now, the Crown Corporation is keeping mum on the budget allocated to the initiative as well as the planned timetable for its implementation. Also silent when asked if she wants to add her own electronic checkouts or integrate existing ones in stores?

On all these questions, the company is content to say that it has “opened discussions” with “big chains” (Metro, Costco, etc.) and, in the case of their establishment, an agent should be on site to make sure ticket buyers have reached the age of majority.

The results are in

At the end of the first six months of the 2022-2023 fiscal year, Loto-Québec hopes to return to the good years before the pandemic period of 2020 and 2021.

“We are still on track to meet and exceed our budget goal,” Mr. Bergeron said. (…) Despite our enthusiasm, we remain cautious given the changing economic context.

In the first half, its net profit reached $805.3 million, an increase of 37.9% over the previous year, and its sales were $1.47 billion, an increase of 35.4%.

Compared to the first half of the pre-pandemic fiscal year 2019-2020, we are talking about a 9.4% increase in profits and a 3.5% increase in revenue.