Why Are Some Tickets Printed In Canada?

Here’s a great behind-the-scenes-at-the-lottery topic to send us into the weekend. We got this question Monday on Facebook: “Why are lottery tickets made in Canada? Seems to me we can do that here in the USA.”

He may not have known it, but the man who posed that question was right on both accounts.

Some of the lottery tickets we sell here in Iowa are printed in Canada. And there are facilities that print lottery tickets here in the United States as well. The background on the situation is that there are only a handful of companies in the entire world that meet the security requirements and have the advanced printing techniques necessary to print lottery tickets.

The Iowa Lottery has contracts to print scratch tickets with all three of the companies that supply that product to the U.S. market. Two of the companies are headquartered in America (in Georgia and Rhode Island specifically) and one of them is based in Winnipeg, Canada. Each of the companies has licensed products and patented processes that only they can provide. And to offer our players the widest variety possible in our games, we have working relationships with all three companies.

The Iowa Lottery’s pull-tab games, by the way, are printed right here in Iowa (in Council Bluffs) by American Games.