Aussie lottery ticket site crashes under weight of U.S. Powerball demand

Aussies desperate to have a crack at the US Powerball $1.5 billion jackpot offered in Wednesday night’s draw crashed online ticket re-seller Lottoland’s .au website prior to the draw as they tried to buy last-minute tickets.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Lottoland, which only this week launched its Australian site after receiving a licence from the Northern Territory Racing Commission (see previous report) signed up 107,000 members this week alone.

Lottoland md Luke Brill said that the response to Lottoland’s launch had been considerably beyond expectations. The lure of the massive jackpot was clearly sufficient to outweigh the cost of a ticket for Aussies – A$10.50, which represents a premium over the Powerball US dollar price of $2.

The Herald points out that Lottoland doesn’t actually sell players tickets to these major foreign lottery draws; instead, players place a bet on the outcome of the draw. Lottoland guarantees that players who match the winning numbers will receive the same prize as if they’d purchased an actual Powerball ticket, minus the same taxes levied on US winners.

The newspaper speculates that Lottoland’s impressive debut may represent serious competition for Aussie domestic lottery firms like Tatts. That could lead Tatts and state governments with which it has business arrangements to challenge the NT licence, some analysts believe.

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