The Party Factory sells enough scratch-off tickets so that the state wants it to sell other lottery products, including Michigan Daily Game tickets, owner Bob Borden told the newspaper. "They sent me a letter and said, 'You have to buy a terminal from us, and for $550, and put in the Daily Game or we will pull our instant tickets out of your store'."
Borden said selling other lottery products typically involves customers filling out forms and asking questions, which would put his single-lane drive-through business at a standstill on Fridays, Saturdays and any other time when sales are brisk.
To manage, Borden said he would have to renovate his place to accommodate a second lane of traffic and have at least two clerks working most of the time. All that would come at a prohibitive cost, he said. And retailers make little, if any, money on lottery tickets. "Other than the traffic coming through, there's no viable reason to handle lottery tickets, no financial reason," he said.
After several inquiries by the Gazette about Party Factory and its situation, Lottery public relations director Andi Brancato gave a universal answer that offered little hope for Borden. "All lottery instant-only retailers must become full-service retailers if they wish to continue with the lottery," Brancato stated in an e-mail response to inquires. "We are converting to a new system that will no longer have the equipment or technology to support instant-only retailers."
"How can they do that?" Borden asked the paper. "No one has explained to me how they can do that. By their choice, the state has put themselves in the position of being a commercial product provider. As such, they have to play by the same rules everybody else does." He said that should prohibit them from restraining his trade.
"If PepsiCo came into my store and said, 'You sell a lot of 2-liters, we want you to put in a fountain or we will pull our products,' that would be restraint of trade. If they did that, I'd be contacting the Michigan Attorney General's Office to run interference for me. "Who do I contact when the state of Michigan, having set themselves up as in the position of being one of my suppliers, does what would not be legal for any other entity to do?"
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