Verizon Outage Limits Lottery Sales

A large Verizon outage that included 37 circuits used by the West Virginia Lottery occurred at approximately 7:30 AM today.

Verizon reported the outage was caused by a fiber cable that was cut in the Pittsburgh area; the problem affected approximately 700 West Virginia Lottery retail locations across the State.

“Data lines are the primary communications vehicle for every lottery transaction on our online gaming system,” said Lottery Director John Musgrave. “Unfortunately, when there is an outage our retailers are not able to sell or validate lottery tickets.”

Musgrave said Verizon continues to work to resolve the issue. Retailers will be notified once the issue has been resolved.