The Red Sox and the Massachusetts State Lottery "won’t be teaming up to sell a new scratch ticket this season" for the first time in six years, according to Thomas Grillo of the BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL. The lottery still has around 10 million Red Sox scratch tickets going back to '09, and 4 million $2 tickets "from last year remain on store shelves." Vista Donut's Missy Cusson, who sells tickets, said that sales of Red Sox tickets "struck out starting in August." She said, "When the Sox started to go downhill, fans were really aggravated and told me they didn't want to support the team in any way." Massachusetts State Lottery Exec Dir Paul Sternburg "acknowledged that had the Sox done better on the field last fall, sales might have improved." Sternberg: "The Red Sox have been a great partner with us, great to work with, and we would love to have done another ticket." He added that "despite the fact that so many Sox tickets are available, the Red Sox continue to be the best selling sports lottery ticket in lottery history." Grillo notes under a licensing agreement with the lottery, the Red Sox have "received payments totaling" $10.5M over the last six years. The Patriots collected $4.1M, the Bruins $1.7M and the Celtics $1M. Red Sox President & CEO Larry Lucchino "batted away suggestions that performance in the last days of the 2011 season had anything to do with sluggish sales," instead blaming the "economy for the slow ticket sales" in '09, '10 and '11 (BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL, 3/9 issue). The Massachusetts Lottery last month reported that lottery sales are up 5.7% for the first half of the fiscal year, which began on July 1. The Red Sox were in second place in the AL East on that date. Last year’s $887M in overall lottery sales were above projections. The state lotteries in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, all of which have fielded Red Sox-themed lottery games in the past, do not plan to do so this season; plans for Vermont are unknown (David Broughton, SportsBusiness Journal).
