Kentucky Lottery terminals shut down
Wednesday October 6th 2010Imagine queuing at a terminal to get your lottery tickets only for it to shut down as you got there. This is what happened at 450 lottery terminals across Louisville on Monday. The Kentucky Lottery terminals shut down temporarily for around 12 hours, due to a technical problem with the phone lines. Although other lottery terminals remained in operation across the state along with a few in Louisville, it still meant that about half of the Kentucky Lottery terminals in Jefferson County were not in service.
The problem occurred during a changeover to a computer backup system which halted the sales of PowerBall, MegaMillions, Kentucky Cash Ball, Pick 3 and Pick 4 games, as well as Three Line Lotto and Win for Life. However, sales for Kentucky Lottery scratch off games were not affected, but it did mean that lottery players were not able to cash in any winnings from scratch off games from the outlets where lottery terminals were not operating.
It has not been revealed how much revenue may have been lost for the Kentucky Lottery due to the terminal outage, but as Monday is usually one of the slowest days for lotto ticket sales, the damage is thought to be minimal.
The terminals came back online at around 4.45pm and the problem is now thought to be solved with terminals fully operational again, so those players wishing to buy lottery tickets for any of the games offered by the Kentucky Lottery, or indeed cash in any scratch off wins, can now do so.