North Dakota’s lottery gets closer to use the Internet to sell tickets directly to buyers.

And in the process they want to make what’s best for them but, not hurting retailers in the process. According to Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, “I certainly want to be careful that we’re not interfering with the good relationship we’ve developed with the retailers in North Dakota, we want to make sure we’re not cutting them out of the process.”

So far the concept is still very new to the lottery’s network of about 400 retailers, which sell most of the tickets for Powerball, Mega Millions and three smaller multistate games. National lottery

Mike Rud, president of the North Dakota Retail Association, thinks that if North Dakota allows Internet lottery ticket sales, there is little point to keeping the lottery’s existing network of convenience stores, grocers and other outlets that now market the tickets. He said stores could use space taken up by lottery equipment for other things.

“It’s the wave of the future. That’s very obvious,” said of Internet sales. “It’s a key element in attracting the emerging market that’s out there.”

Michael Jones, superintendent of the Illinois Lottery, said the agency is working on having everything ready to begin marketing tickets for its Powerball and Lotto games on its website by early April. Jones hopes to add Mega Millions to the sales lineup as well.

For Jones, “When jackpots for either game rise above $100 million, 300,000 to 500,000 additional players are drawn in,” but market research indicates that those online sales would not hurt lottery ticket demand at traditional retailers.

“Illinois and New York have kind of led the way, but I think everybody is looking at it now,” Jones said.

The Illinois Legislature has already authorized a trial run to test the system’s ability to ensure that players younger than 18 and those outside Illinois are blocked from buying tickets and, if they won large prizes, they would not be paid.

“Lotteries in general have not had any mechanism for many years to create new demand among people who don’t play the lottery now,” Jones said. “The lottery’s been concentrating on selling more tickets to the same people, as opposed to selling tickets to a lot of people.”

The North Dakota Lottery already sells ticket subscriptions in 13-, 26- and 52-week increments, which can be bought online using a credit card. But overall, these subscriptions make up only about 2 percent of the lottery’s ticket sales, lottery director Randy Miller said Tuesday. During its last budget year, the lottery sold $23 million worth of tickets.

North Dakota players cannot buy individual tickets on the Internet, which prevents them from using the lottery website to jump in when jackpots exceed $100 million. Lottery numbers

Let’s see then what will happen to this North Dakota’s lottery officials plan for April. And hopefully more people will have the possibility of buying lottery and, still help retailers to keep their businesses running.