To prevent unscrupulous lottery vendors from taking advantage of consumers by overcharging for lottery tickets, sometimes by as much as 50 baht per ticket, Thailand’s Government Lottery Office (GLO) will launch the online sale to the public of five million lottery tickets at the approved price of 80 baht each, through the “Pao Tang” application, on June 2nd.
According to Chairman of the Government Lottery Committee Lawaron Saengsanit, the June 2nd launch comes after the GLO has successfully tested the online sales system in the past two lottery prize drawings.
The five million lottery tickets are those from the lottery quotas withdrawn by the GLO from 10,000 vendors, after it was discovered that they were not selling the tickets to the public as required, but to unauthorised online lottery dealers instead.
The GLO has also set up 600 retail outlets across the country to sell 2.5 million lottery tickets to the public at 80 baht each, also on June 2nd, but buyers can only pay for the tickets through the “Pao Tang” app, with no cash being accepted.
Lawaron said that the online sale will offer a new option for both consumers and vendors.
About 3,000 lottery vendors, whose individual quota of 500 tickets for each draw has been withdrawn, have petitioned the GLO and their case is still pending a final decision.
It was, however, initially agreed that, if these vendors are to get their quotas back, they will only be allowed to sell the tickets online, via the “Pao Tang” app, to prevent them from selling overpriced tickets again.
In March and April, police and GLO officials raided two offices of Mungkornfa (Blue Dragon) Company, an online lottery platform, in Nonthaburi and Loei provinces and seized about two million lottery tickets.
On May 12th, the Criminal Court dismissed a petition from the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DES) seeking to shut down websites run by the Mungkornfa online lottery platform, as it was accused of defrauding the public and selling overpriced lottery tickets, among other issues.
The court ruled, however, that the company’s role is to collect lottery tickets from different sources and to serve as a channel through which they can be sold by the vendors and that it had nothing to do with setting ticket prices.
