Maryland lottery officials are looking at selling tickets and games online by July 1 to bring in additional revenues for the state, but retail officials said that would hurt convenience stores and eliminate a safeguard that keeps underage people from gambling.

While details of the plan are still being worked out, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has said it could steer $2 million more into the state’s coffers in fiscal 2013 from six months of online lottery sales should they start July 1.

Lottery Director Stephen Martino said several states have begun looking at online lottery ticket sales after the U.S. Department of Justice issued an opinion in December that federal law against online gambling did not apply to sales by state lotteries.

Current state regulations prohibit lottery tickets, including the popular scratch-off games and the Powerball drawings, from being purchased with credit cards, a popular way to pay for transactions on the Internet. But one possibility is for the state to sell a card similar to an Apple iTunes card that would be bought with cash at a store, with the money deposited into an online lottery account, Martino said.

“We believe the lottery and the lottery industry needs new sales channels,” Martino said. “This is how people are increasingly going to be doing business.”

The online games also could have more of an entertainment aspect, Martino said. Games on popular social media sites such as Facebook could be developed to incorporate lottery play.

“It would be more entertainment with a longer play cycle than scratching off a latex cover,” Martino said.

But convenience store owners where many lottery tickets are sold are worried that moving the games online could hurt their businesses, said Lyle Beckwith, senior vice president of government relations with the National Association of Convenience Stores, a trade organization in Alexandria, Va.

The average convenience store customer who doesn’t buy lottery tickets spends $6.29 per visit, while the average customer buying tickets averages $10.35 per visit, buying more sodas, snacks and other items in addition to their lottery tickets and scratch-off games, Beckwith said.

The retailers also can confirm the age of lottery customers, and there is no good way to check that online, Beckwith said.

“We are the industry of age verification,” Beckwith said.

The state is looking at ways to work out all potential problems with online sales, Martino said.

State officials also think online sales will not hurt convenience stores because other nations that have adopted online lottery sales have not seen a drop off of business at stores, Martino said.

The state also is looking at ways to “marry the experience of brick-and-mortar with Internet where you buy a traditional instant ticket with an instant portion there and then go to the website to play the rest of the game,” Martino said.

But many of the plans are still in the early discussion phase, however, he said.

The Maryland Retailers Association in Annapolis has not taken a position on the proposal, said Patrick Donoho, president of the trade group.

“We’re waiting to see what they mean by that. The devil is in the details on something like that,” he said. “I’m sure once we see details of the proposal we can take a look at it and take a position.”

He added, “It’s one of those items in the budget when you’re reading it and it’s, ‘OK, show me more.’”

cford@gazette.net