The plug has been pulled on a bill that would give the Hoosier Lottery permission to sell tickets online and host instant games on its website.
The proposal cleared an Indiana House committee on Jan. 8 but had not been called for a vote by the full House. It was scratched from Thursday’s House calendar and won’t advance this legislative session, House Public Policy Committee Chair Ethan Manning said.
“It didn’t have enough support, really, from either caucus on the concept,” Manning told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “I don’t think I could have changed one word in the bill to gain any more votes. It’s just the idea itself. We’re clearly not ready, as a Legislature, to move any further on any forms of online gambling.”
Illinois, Kentucky and Michigan are among 18 states currently with online lottery sales and Hoosier Lottery officials supported the move as a way to boost revenue.
An analysis of House Bill 1078 projected that online sales would increase the lottery’s revenues by between $314 million and $629 million in the third year. That would increase the lottery’s annual profits — $340 million for fiscal year 2025 — by between $31 million and $94 million in the third year.
The lottery’s sales have been flat at around $1.7 billion for the past five years.
Manning, R-Logansport, called the bill’s failure “a shame, because it’s one way to get additional state revenue without raising taxes, and we have very few ways to do that.”
“I was hopeful that that argument would help, but it did not,” he said.
Republican House Speaker Todd Huston said he wasn’t persuaded by such reasoning.
“Gaming policy shouldn’t be done for the sake of revenue,” Huston told reporters Thursday. “It should be done because you think it’s the right public policy, and we’ve never chased revenue in the past. I think it would be a mistake to do it now.”
A Hoosier Lottery spokesman declined to comment.
Manning’s committee last year endorsed a bill for both online lottery and internet casino games, but it didn’t reach the full House for a vote amid concerns of drawing business away from physical casinos and greater gambling addiction risks.
Manning said this year’s bill faced similar objections despite focusing solely on lottery sales, pointing to worries over online sports betting that was legalized in 2019.
“Sports wagering, having gone so early and Indiana being one of the earliest states to do that, I think that’s hurt our argument for further forms of online gaming, because a lot of members don’t like the impacts,” he said. “They don’t like seeing the advertisements and those sorts of things.”
This story has been updated with comment from House Speaker Todd Huston and Hoosier Lottery declining to comment.
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