Lithuania sets new lottery age purchase to +18

The Budget and Finance Committee of Lithuania’s Seimas (Parliamentary Assembly) has completed a draft decree proposing new standards on lottery play and advertising for the Baltic state.

The Committee’s headline measure has called on parliament to undertake a vote to raise the minimum age of purchase of lottery tickets from 16-to-18 years of age.

If approved, Lithuania’s government will enforce a new lottery age-restriction from 1 January 2023.

The decree has further ordered Olifėja, Lithuania’s state-sanctioned operator, to display age-range notifications and safer gambling warnings across its weekly lottery draws of Teleloto, Vikinglotto, Eurojackpot and further Instant-win games.

Olifėja serves as Lithuania’s national lottery steward, charged with raising funds for the National Olympic Committee, its business activities monitored by the Lithuania’s Gaming Control Authority.

Since 2020, the successive Lithuanian governments of PMs Saulius Skvernelis and Ingrida Šimonytė have chosen to amend the laws of 2016 Gambling Act.

Last year, the government ordered the Gaming Control Authority to ban all licensed operators from promoting any form of gambling incentive (bonuses, discounts, reward programmes).

Furthermore, the government granted the Gaming Control Authority direct powers to IP-block unlicensed operators and to issued bigger fines on non-compliant operators, changes that were sanctioned as a COVID-19 civic protection measure. 

As stands, Lithuania carries amongst the strictest age laws for gambling in Europe, in which players must be +21 years of age to enter a gambling venue.