Introduction

While it is true that the internet has changed the world of gambling forever, the main areas people think of include slots, roulette, and blackjack. Of course, there’s no denying that the influence on these parts of the casino world has been extraordinary and taken into a brand-new digital age. 

However, lottery apps are one of the most successful areas of niche casino gaming that have gained traction in the mobile market. It’s not a simple open-and-close case of people being able to put their bets on via their smartphones—some innovations have been ushered in and revolutionized how people play. Let’s look at some significant changes since the dawn of mobile gaming at the end of the noughties. 

The Rise Of The Global Market

Slot gaming has never been a casino specific to one country or region. However, before the internet and before mobile apps started to take hold, it was a collection of regional markets rather than one overarching slot machine sector. Gamblers in Australia and the UK would play the same games by the same developers, but until the internet brought these worlds together, they were very much markets of their own standing. 

Aussies have just as much of a penchant for slots as they do in the UK or the US, but they call them pokies. So, if you’ve ever encountered pokies online and you haven’t been sure whether they’re a new type of casino game – they’re not; they’re slots. In fact, the term is used right throughout Down Under, including in New Zealand. 

Whether you call them pokies, slots, or whatever you call them, the internet and mobile apps combine everything under one umbrella. For the first time, game designers were all facing off on the same level playing field—Aussie slot gamers, the top Aussie poker players—it didn’t matter. All they had to do was log on from home, and they could access the global market. Lottery competitions and organizers noticed this change and adjusted their designs to maximize their audience, too.

How Lottery Apps Changed The Game 

Although lottery competitions had more of a localized feel to their design, the internet, and mobile apps allowed people to play lottery games on international markets. Some countries that are close geographically allowed some crossover. 

For instance, English players could play the Irish lotto, and the Euromillions were available to UK, Irish, and mainland European customers. Even the relatively small prizes in the Euros can exceed £50 million, with the biggest-ever UK winner taking home £184 million—around $250 million. 

On the subject of lottery apps, it’s simple. They changed the game so that people could access their lottery tickets without having to walk down to the local shop, write down their numbers, and get a vendor to print them. By freeing up people’s time and energy, lottery companies could focus on developing their apps, with many branching into other areas of the gambling world, ranging from scratchcards to other interactive niche casino games.

It also meant that instead of tuning into the draw to ensure you could cross your numbers off, you could find all the results online, even international results, whether from US lotteries, European competitions, or smaller regions like Bhutan.

So, the rise of apps and online lotteries didn’t eliminate the nightmare scenario of not cashing in your winning ticket. Still, it freed up time and allowed lotto companies to expand into other areas of the casino gaming world via their apps. 

A Symptom Of The Changing World

While lottery apps may have made everything more convenient, they were also a microcosm of the changing world. Today, we do everything on our phones. We can access basically anything from our smartphones or tablets, whether we are getting our news, doing our banking or shopping, or watching world history change in real time. 

If lotto companies could not adjust to this broader global change, they would not have reaped the rewards that the casino industry and sports betting world have seamlessly managed. Branching out these options and bringing in lotto competitions to the broader innovations of the broader online gambling world has transformed the market forever. 

Conclusion

Lottery apps drilled into the broader innovations in gaming, but they also ensured that they could provide something extra. Convenience, cost, an easier way to check your numbers, and providing a way to access gambling markets via your smartphone.

Lottery competitions might feel like they are on the periphery of the gambling world because a general audience more roundly accepts them. Still, at their very essence, they are betting markets. 

Generally speaking, gambling markets have transitioned online with great aplomb and efficiency, and lottery competitions, which offer some of the biggest prizes ever seen in the history of gambling, were going to follow the pathway set by customer preference – a decade ago, this was mobile app gaming, and a decade from now, it’s likely to be the same.