Royal Caribbean has brought the scratch-off lottery experience into the digital age, rolling out a mobile lottery game through its onboard app. Currently available to guests sailing aboard Utopia of the Seas — which homeports at Port Canaveral — the feature lets cruisers purchase digital scratch-off tickets ranging from $2 to $20, with a top jackpot of $100,000.
The move follows a familiar path for the cruise line: physical scratch-off tickets have been sold inside Casino Royale for years, and the new app-based version simply makes them easier to access. Prizes under $2,000 are credited directly to a guest's Royal Caribbean account, while larger wins require a visit to Casino Royale to collect the payout and complete a tax form.
Royal Caribbean isn't the first major line to wade into mobile lottery waters. Carnival debuted its Carnival Millions game in February, which pools players across multiple ships for a daily $1 million drawing — a notably different structure from Royal Caribbean's individual scratch-off format.
The broader push toward onboard mobile gaming has been measured, partly because full iGaming at sea has run into real-world hurdles. A 2022 partnership between BetMGM and Carnival that brought mobile sports betting and online casino play to more than 50 ships was ultimately discontinued — offshore satellite lag created problems for sports betting, and cruisers who wanted to gamble tended to prefer the physical casino floor over a phone screen.
Royal Caribbean describes the lottery feature as a test phase for now, with additional ships expected to join in the coming months. This story was reported by Casino.org.
