44 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2025 Meeting the Moment: The Rise of Distributed Commerce There was a time when buying a lottery ticket was simple because it fit into people’s every day routines. You stopped at a gas station or convenience store, picked your numbers, paid a couple bucks, and tucked the ticket in your wallet. The system worked—because the routine worked. But those routines are vanishing. The way people shop, discover, and transact has been fundamentally transformed by the digital age. The challenge for lotteries is clear: build a strategy that matches the pace of modern consumer behavior. The Numbers Don’t Lie Today’s consumers expect the world to come to them. Groceries arrive via Instacart. Dinner is one tap away on DoorDash. Even big-ticket items—phones, flights, hotel rooms— can be bought in seconds through embedded shopping flows on third-party apps. This isn’t a passing phase. It’s a permanent shift. A full 70% of consumers now expect to be able to complete purchases without ever leaving the app or platform they’re using.1 Embedded commerce has become the norm, and digital wallets now drive nearly half of all global online transactions,2 cutting checkout friction to nearly nothing. The writing is on the wall: shopping, as we once knew it, is being unbundled from websites and rebuilt around behavior. What Is Distributed Commerce? Behind this evolution is a concept known as distributed commerce— a model where brands embed shopping opportunities directly into the platforms and ecosystems consumers already frequent. More than half of U.S. e-commerce today takes place in these environments: marketplaces, social platforms, and fulfillment-integrated apps.3 Consumers aren’t visiting brandowned websites as often. They’re making purchases in the same digital spaces where they scroll, chat, and browse. And increasingly, these platforms don’t just sell—they fulfill. Amazon’s Fulfilled by Amazon, Walmart Fulfillment Services, and Booking.com’s reservation tools offer brands a ready-made infrastructure: inventory, shipping, returns, customer service—all bundled with massive reach and consumer trust. A product is no longer tied to a single digital shelf. Instead, it's dropped into the daily scroll of life: iPhone in your Amazon recommendations, Nike shoes in your Instagram feed, or a Marriott hotel room in Google Maps. Take Apple, for example. The tech titan, long known for its tightly controlled ecosystem, sells its products on Amazon through an official storefront. Fulfillment, customer service, and delivery? All handled by Amazon. The reason is simple: access to 100 million+ Prime users and the infrastructure to serve them instantly. Today, nearly two-thirds of Apple’s revenue comes through indirect channels.4 Distributed commerce isn’t a backup plan for Apple—it’s a pillar of their strategy. Nike offers another model of blended execution. While still investing in direct-to-consumer efforts, Nike makes its products available through Instagram Shopping, influencer links, as well as Amazon. Now, 54% of Nike’s revenue comes from indirect sales.5 Their model is clear: meet customers where they are, make the purchase effortless, and support fulfillment through a mix of in-house and third-party solutions. In hospitality, Marriott sells its rooms on Booking.com, Google Travel, Expedia, and even Alexa. Roughly 14% of Marriott’s bookings come from these external channels.6 But they do more than just list inventory— they integrate loyalty accounts into third-party flows. By encouraging loyalty participation, even when the transaction happens off-platform, it allows Marriott to retain customer data and deepen relationships. Together, these examples show that distributed commerce is not about giving up control. It’s about expanding access. When done right, it accelerates growth, reduces operational burden, and meets modern consumer expectations. So, What Does This Have to Do with Lottery? For lottery, this shift presents a real challenge. The issue isn’t about brand recognition—it’s about creating responsible access to lottery products. Are the products showing up where people spend their time? Distributed commerce provides the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTg4MTM=