as everything reopens it's possible to go back to instore sales
Economic Changes
The number of COVID-19 cases around the world are starting to go down in many countries with the increase in the number of people getting vaccinated. Some lock-downs are being partially or fully lifted, and a resurgence of some type of normalcy is starting to come back to our daily lives after living with Covid and the lottery for a long time. With all this happening, the lottery is going to change, if not for the better, then at least as it was.
After lock-downs end, it is expected that lottery purchases are going to increase dramatically. With more people out and about, lottery retailers that have been closed will reopen, open retailers with gain an increase in customers, and a lot more tickets will be sold. There are several reasons that these are going to happen.
Social and Economic Views
From an economic standpoint, many people have been out of work for a while and full access to the lottery means many of these people are going to buy tickets to try to win back some of the wages and salaries that they lost during the pandemic. You will likely see more people lining up at retailers to buy their tickets. You might even see more prizes, or prize increases, available for each draw, as operators scramble to build revenue back up to pre-pandemic levels. There may be more lottery advertising and marketing to win back previous players and gain new ones.
From a social perspective, lock-down has isolated a lot of people into their homes with venturing out simply a method of survival for food and medications. Now, after lock-down, there may be very long waits at retailers when progressive lottery prizes increase to tens of millions of dollars due to an increase in the number of tickets sold. Don't be surprised if both online purchasing, and retailer terminals, become over loaded and have minor to major malfunctions, including system shutdowns that could prevent tickets from being sold or verified, or even worse, prevent draws from being conducted. It also means that those players who have a problem gambling issue may likely get back into their destructive patterns.
To avoid situations like these, if you intend on going to a retailer, either planned or on a whim, do so early in the morning when the retailer opens, for a better likelihood that you won’t have to wait in line, and that your ticket purchase goes through uneventfully. Buy your tickets early and not at the last minute when many players decide to get their tickets. You don’t need to do anything to safeguard your online ticket purchases, but retail-puchased tickets will need to be signed immediately and safeguarded against loss or theft as the interview portion of large prize win, verifications may be more involved, and you don’t want to have any delay in receiving your win.
So once lock-down is lifted, you can go back to buying your tickets any way you want. Just be aware that this will be a post-pandemic type of situation and things, including lottery purchases and draws, may have to change to reflect the new normal. Hopefully the changes will be for the good.