TX started something but if u don't live in state or visiting to buy

shld not play/win

A smart and brilliant move by the Hoosier lawmakers.

* l guess Indiana politicians are counting on housebound folks to ask their neighbors to run errands to purchase lottery tickets & scratchers for them or call a Uber to pick them up to run to the store. One wonders which service is cheaper.

Yeah, that's why I despise these blanket bans. They really disenfranchise people like the elderly, the homebound, people in rural areas, shift workers, etc. There is no good reason to outright ban courier services. If the state wants to have some kind of regulations on courier services, that makes sense. A ban does not.

* Totally agree Todd. To deprive some elderly folk who don't have the means of getting around due to no fault of their own and robbing them of the joy they may get from playing the lottery as entertainment is heartless.

Do you think each state should implement to purchase on their website 

I mean how long have couriers been doing this since Covid?

I think more states will follow suit. It comes down to having any lottery or having a flawed system which can be rigged by those with deep pockets.

The alternative to outlawing couriers is limit their ability to print/sell tickets, limit the number of terminals, and/or limit the number of tickets a terminal can print in a day.

All of these are implemented in Texas.

Better for states to do something, even if it has flaws, than to be facing lawsuits for failing to protect the interest of all players.

I agree with most of what you have said

I still think that paragraph 2 of your response:"The alternative to outlawing couriers is limit their ability to print/sell tickets, limit the number of terminals, and/or limit the number of tickets a terminal can print in a day". ma

may still be defeated by the operators setting up multiple stations in different addresses and/or using an array of masked entities as pseudo-names to camouflage, cloak, disguise and conceal the real true structure of their operations.

I am eager to learn of the parameters you could propose, if given the chance on how to make  ¶ 2 work.

Couriers have nothing to do with "rigging a lottery" (which itself is a loaded/incorrect term).  I assume by "rigging" you mean someone buying all the possible combinations.  THAT IS NOT DONE THROUGH A COURIER.  It would be too expensive, because couriers charge extra money per ticket/order.

Just because Texas legislators and the New York Times are unable to differentiate between two separate concepts does not mean that we at Lottery Post cannot correctly separate these two concepts.  What they do is called GASLIGHTING.  We don't do that here.

Couriers are not the same as buying all the combinations.  They are two separate things.  Stopping people from buying all the combinations IS NOT ACCOMPLISHED BY BANNING COURIERS.  Jackpots have been "purchased" (buying all the combinations) without couriers.  Couriers have NOTHING to do with buying all the combinations.

I hope I have completely covered all possible angles of this gaslighting, because it would be awesome to finally be able to stop pointing this out and have real conversations about these two topics.

This is completely stupid. It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Courier services have an important role to play. If you don't like them, regulate them. What is next, banning the lottery? Really, really dumb.

Good job of explaining it again but a couple of members seem unable to accept or process your clear explanation. They want to spin it into an overly sensational conspiracy.

Completely agree. I was telling Todd that as a journalist I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head seeing the word "rigging" in the latest NYT article. This is an interesting topic, and I absolutely love the discussion surrounding it, but I cannot stand the misconceptions and misinformation when it comes to couriers especially when a newspaper like the NYT has so many readers and such a great deal of influence.

Bonus - the subheader in said article goes like:
"Texas lottery executives blessed a scheme that ensured one player would win a $95 million jackpot in 2023."

Sweet mother of ball drawings please help me

Typical for the NYT. That is why people need to do their own research vs simply deferring to legacy media and letting legacy media do the thinking for them.

It is like the legacy media telling us the economy is crashing when the markets actually started wobbling last summer and were overdue for a correction.

Megamillions needn't worry.

Their sales keep dropping. They only sold 4.6 million tickets for the April 25, 2025 draw. The jackpot rose again by $10 million. At this rate the $2.0 billion threshold will hit around October or 2026. Who knows. 

Still can't quite figure out who came up the $5.00 ticket idea. Retailers don't like it. Lottery ticket buyers really don't like it, they are not buying the tickets. 

Megamillions won't admit their mistake or make a change anytime soon.

I would do what Canada does with LottoMax. $5.00 buys three chances. Jackpots will be won way more often. I mean, isn't that the point?

MM had invariably converted the game into a pseudo scratch-off game and in so doing concomitantly dismissed most  its non or occasional scratch-off players from participating in the game. I am one of those dismissed.

Psychologically it is easier for a player to shell out $6 and buy 3 tickets at $2/line in a drawing than spend $5 for just 1 line and this element is strongly poised to degrade the courage of the chance-taker to gamble with his/her money.

With PB at $2/line I see this game as winning over those who have decided not to spend $5/line  at MM and is now better positioned as th,e game of choice for the $2 and a dream everyday or every now and then player.

"these blanket bans. They really disenfranchise people like the elderly, the homebound, people in rural areas, "

A simple solution would be for the lottery to offer online sales themselves. That would also allow them to limit sales to request that originate within the state if they have concerns about selling across state lines. They could even set up an in-house courier service and take the  orders and print the actual tickets on behalf of players. As a bonus, players who have trouble playing at a retailer could buy tickets without the hefty service charge

"The alternative to outlawing couriers is limit their ability to print/sell tickets, limit the number of terminals, and/or limit the number of tickets a terminal can print in a day. "

Assuming the intent is to prevent  a coordinated effort to buy (nearly) all of the possible combinations, there are  plenty of strategies that should be effective. One critical change would be limiting the ability to automate  purchases by using QR codes or barcodes. It would probably also be necessary to limit the number of combinations that can be processed by a single terminal. Besides a limit on the actual total number of combinations there could be a limit on the average number of combination on each ticket. That could easily make it  virtually impossible to successfully orchestrate the purchase of most combinations without limiting legitimate purchases by regular players.

"I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head seeing the word "rigging" in the latest NYT article. "

Rigging is a perfectly valid word to describe a scheme that is intended to result in a non-random outcome that doesn't fit the game's intended result. In a handful of instances drawings have been rigged to produce results that were easily predictable for insiders, and in a few instances the ticket buying process has been rigged to allow one entity to buy  most of the possible combinations.

"the subheader in said article goes like:
'Texas lottery executives blessed a scheme that ensured one player would win a $95 million jackpot in 2023.' "

Journalists not fully understanding the subject they're covering has been going on  since about the time journalism started, and reporters miss the finer points of lottery games on a frequent basis. Journalists  doing a poor job of conveying their precise meaning is another common problem of the reporting process. A reporter who knows that jackpots are parimutuel prizes knows that a guaranteed win wouldn't necessarily be limited to a single winner, but the scheme was intended for "one" winner in particular to claim at least a share of the jackpot. The actual execution didn't ensure that that one entity would win but the scheme was certainly intended to ensure it, and by providing the necessary equipment, materials, and legitimacy the TX lottery certainly gave it their blessing.

I'm glad you understand the heavy connotation that the word "rigging" carries! But I need to correct a couple of things that you said.

As much as buying over 99% of all possible combinations just about nearly ensures a win, it was still not a guaranteed win in the sense that they would have profited from the effort. I find myself continuously reminding people that anyone else that night had a shot at winning, which would have drastically altered the outcome.

Buying all possible combinations is not "rigging," and like we have said until we're blue in the face, it is possible to achieve it without  the assistance of lottery couriers. It has been done before.

If you'd like to go back and read through my original investigation, you can see a more in-depth explanation of how a jackpot buyout was accomplished without courier services, confirmation directly from the Texas Lottery that they had zero knowledge the buyout scheme was underway, and that they followed all regulations and procedures in place at the time to meet retailer needs and maximize profits during a sales period for a huge jackpot. In fact, they had recently caught wind of a second buyout attempt and managed to shut it down before it could happen again.

You also seem to be referencing the Eddie Tipton scandal - now that is 100% rigging. He altered code to guarantee he and his cohorts would win. His win was truly one of those non-random outcomes that you are describing.

Exactly. Rigging means a fixed predetermined outcome. That was not the situation here.

Exactly! I never understood how they got that idea. Probably they really wanted to ban couriers and used that as an excuse!