Marketing strategies are out there to attract new customers and to keep the existing ones. The Oregon Lottery has decided to launch a new website called the ORcade as a means to lure new players into their game. 

The reason is simple:  in the current economy, the Legislature that set up the lottery more than twenty years ago will do its best to keep the revenue that it has been generating for the state rolling. US lottery

And it has been doing a good job at it, however the market changes and although the traditional games like Megabucks and Powerball still provide a good revenue, video poker has gained them more profit.  Only last year, revenues reached over one billion, 61% of it went to public schools and universities.  The ORcade is a strategy to gain an audience and at the same time to stop the decline in the revenue from familiar games such as the Scratch-Its. Lottery results

The ORcade however is a controversy by itself.

Oregon already is not only resourcing to raise revenue in  in such a way that lower-income families wager rather than save, this in turn could intensify in the current economic situation.  But by implementing the ORcade  people would be lured helplessly into this game in the privacy of their homes as well.  All for the chance of a promise to win.  It is like inviting the devil into one´s home.

Online gambling is a federal offense. Oregon lottery officials say The ORcade is not a gaming site but instead a place for  people with non-winning Scratch-its  to type in their ticket serial numbers for a second chance at winning cash prizes and also to play some games for points that can gain them sufficient points to claim prizes. National lottery

It has been acknowledged by the officials in charge to seeing the legal details that The ORcade  does not meet the definition of online gambling. Minutes of an Oregon Lottery Commission meeting in June show The ORcade is not considered as online gambling because the Scratch-its “are still bought at the retailer locations and prizes are still claimed at the lottery; these second-chance drawings are simply added value to an existing game.”

As consumers we love the added value.  However we are also walking into some open tramps.  At the same June meeting, Steven Ungar, the lottery commission´s chairman said it wasn´t necessary to verify the age of 18 before signing onto The Orcade.  He also mentioned, according to the minutes about the  “the inevitability of Internet gambling.”

And it is sure that we are headed towards this grey area with the launching of this new attractive website.