About Us - PlayiLottery

What is PlayiLottery?

PlayiLottery is an information hub for anyone interested in the US online lottery industry in all its forms (state lottery sites/apps, online ticket couriers, and more).

We provide free helpful tools and guides for players.
We conduct thorough and unbiased reviews of online lotteries and lottery courier services in the US.
We stay on top of the latest industry news and trends, producing a wide-ranging newsfeed written by experts and journalists with years of experience in US gaming.
We emphasize safe play and provide responsible gaming resources.
We promote education about the online lottery industry, which is still a relatively new and often misunderstood market in the US.
We report on the legal online lottery industry only. We do not cover unsafe, unregulated operators.

PlayiLottery is part of Catena Media, a national network of sites covering the legal US online gambling industry. Some of Catena’s flagship properties include Legal Sports Report, PlayUSA, and Bonus.com. PlayiLottery is an independently owned site that is not endorsed by, funded by, or affiliated with any online lottery.

Get to know the team

You can only trust the content of a website if the people in charge of that content deserve it. We are proud of the expertise of our team, and we are happy to present our contributors’ bios here for your review.

Chris Imperiale, Managing Editor

Chris Imperiale

Chris Imperiale is the Managing Editor for PlayiLottery. Along with a group of great writers, Chris helps produce an engaging and informative newsfeed that provides the latest on the US online lottery industries. He has covered various gambling markets for Catena Media, most notably Pennsylvania, since 2018.

Before working on PlayiLottery, Chris was the Managing Editor for PlayPennsylvania and PlayWV. He managed each outlet for several years, becoming well-versed in gambling legislation in the casino, sports betting, and lottery industries. He also helped report on updates from the Pennsylvania Lottery—one of the foremost US iLottery states—including new partnerships and tools available for players.

Chris is a Rutgers University graduate who has written and edited for several publications, including Bleacher Report.

You can email Chris at [email protected].

Drew Ellis, Lead Writer

Drew Ellis

A member of Catena Media since 2020, Drew Ellis is the Lead Writer at PlayiLottery, where he handles coverage of the online lottery industry in the US. He previously spearheaded news content at PlayMichigan, covering one of the most prominent online lottery industries in the US—as well as all the other aspects of Michigan’s sprawling iGaming market.

Drew has experience covering the gambling industries in Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, and Canada. Decades of media experience provide him with the background to handle complex lottery laws and policies around the country and the expansion of iLottery in the US.

Before working for Catena Media, Drew spent more than 20 years in the newspaper industry, covering sports and gambling. His work for the Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun and the Oakland Press was recognized with awards by the Associated Press and other media organizations. He has also contributed to the Detroit Free Press and the Associated Press, and he currently contributes to All Lions—the Sports Illustrated home of the Detroit Lions.

You can email Drew at [email protected].

Jared Daigle, Content Manager

Professional headshot of Jared Daigle, online lottery industry expert

Jared Daigle is the Content Manager at PlayiLottery, overseeing both the evergreen and news content on the site. He has been involved in the igaming industry since 2021, where he began covering Michigan, one of the biggest iLottery markets in the US. Later in 2021, Jared joined Catena Media, where he has worked on managing content across a vast array of websites (including Bonus.com, PlayUSA, and Legal Sports Report), each covering various regions and various igaming verticals: online sports betting, online casinos, social casinos, online poker, online horse betting, and of course, iLottery.

Besides his work at Catena, Jared has gotten to write and edit content in a variety of industries, including education, mental health, technology, and of course, online gambling. He even gets to teach individuals in other organizations (such as Meta, the US State Department, and the NHTSA) about how to write and edit documents more effectively.

Jared is dedicated to honesty and transparency, explaining concepts in the online lottery industry and giving relative strengths and weaknesses of all the options available in a given state.

You can email him at [email protected].

Other contributors

Cole Rush

Cole Rush is a contributor for PlayiLottery who spent six years working at Scientific Games (now Light and Wonder), one of the world's leading lottery operators. He writes for a handful of Catena Media sites, covering online lottery, iGaming, sports betting, and more. A prolific writer in the US gaming market, Cole also has bylines at iGaming Business, ICE 365, and IGB North America. You can email him at [email protected].

Martin Green

Martin Green is an experienced writer with a focus on online lotteries, casinos, and sportsbooks. He spent five years working for William Hill before becoming a journalist in 2009. He is also an avid lottery player, with plenty of first-hand knowledge, experience, and insight to pass along. You can email him at [email protected].

Ann Holmes

Ann Holmes is a writer with years of experience in the US gaming industry. A former multimedia journalist, she left the newsroom to pursue a freelance career in 2019. Ann has spent most of her freelance career covering iGaming, online lottery, and online sports betting for Catena Media. Her work can be found across several online publications, including PlayiLottery, Bonus.com, and PlayUSA. You can email her at [email protected].

Nathan Frederick

Nathan Frederick is a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and has over two decades of experience in the sports and gaming industries. His work includes digital and print media, numerous podcast appearances, and more than 1,000 published bylines. He has also authored three books, one of which launched as an Amazon No. 1 New Release. You can email him at [email protected].

Rita Ferreira

Rita Ferreira is a writer with over six years of experience in the online gambling industry. After spending three years in the European iGaming hub, she shifted her focus to the North American market and has been providing her insights about ilottery, online casinos, social gaming platforms, and online sports betting ever since. She has worked with industry leaders, including Catena Media, Gaming Innovation Group, and Forbes Betting. You can contact her at [email protected].

Hill Kerby

Hill Kerby has been writing about the online and retail lottery industry in the US since 2021. He is a contributor to multiple Catena Media sites and has a background in poker, sports and psychology which he incorporates into his writing. You can email him at [email protected].

Dan Holmes

Dan Holmes is a contributor for PlayiLottery with plenty of experience under his belt. He writes about lottery gaming and various forms of online gambling for sites across Catena Media. Beyond that, Dan is the author of three books, and he previously reported for Major League Baseball, as well as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Currently, he is residing in Michigan — one of the top online lottery markets in the US — with his family. You can reach Dan at [email protected].

Matthew Bain

Part of Catena Media since 2022, Matthew Bain is the former Content Manager at PlayiLottery, where he oversaw editorial and evergreen content to make the site as helpful as humanly possible to anyone who visits. (Thanks for visiting!) Matthew has led various Catena sites through crucial, high-interest moments in the US gambling industry, from California's Prop 26 vs. Prop 27 battle, to sports betting launches in Massachusetts, Kentucky, and North Carolina, to ongoing iGaming legislative efforts in states such as New York and Maryland.

Why should you trust us?

The internet can be a double-edged sword sometimes. On the one hand, it is fantastic to have so much information at your fingertips. But on the other, since anyone can post, you can sometimes find outdated, biased, or flat-out false information. Some sites even have ulterior motives for presenting information in a certain way.

That’s why it is always a good idea to check the source of online information. And we don’t hide from that scrutiny. Indeed, we encourage you thoroughly examine PlayiLottery because we are confident that you will find that our site passes all credibility tests. Here are some reasons for our confidence:

Accuracy and objectivity above all else

While we may make money if you sign up for a platform via one of our links (see our ad disclosure below), we pride ourselves on independent coverage. Nobody employed at PlayiLottery has an affiliation with any website or operator in the lottery industry or any other gaming industry. We thoroughly vet each writer who joins our team to ensure they meet this standard.

How do we choose what information to publish? It’s simple: we only publish what we feel will be helpful to readers who want to know more about the online lottery industry. Our news articles come from us keeping our finger on the pulse of the industry, including going in depth with our sources. Any review we offer of a product is based on hours of using the product and looking for both the strengths and weaknesses that we know matter to players. (We go into more depth about this on our PlayiLottery review process page.) Any analysis we offer is based on our expertise in the industry. And any other page we publish is to help readers make informed choices about playing the lottery online.

And before we publish any of this, all our work goes through multiple accuracy checks. Even after publishing a page, we regularly update the information to ensure constant accuracy. You can read more about this process on the PlayiLottery Editorial Guidelines page.

If you ever find any content that appears inaccurate or misleading, we encourage you to contact our team so we can make changes if necessary.

Experience in the industry

PlayiLottery team members boast a robust background in the gaming industry. That includes lengthy career stops at Scientific Games (a worldwide leader in lottery operations) and William Hill (a worldwide leader in gambling operations), as well as time spent playing on the professional poker circuit.

Our team of experts and journalists has more than 40 combined years of experience covering various US and Canada gaming industries, both for Catena Media sites and for other outlets and trade publications. This coverage includes the lottery, online casinos, sports betting, and more.

High standard for journalistic excellence

The PlayiLottery news team is full of journalists with decades of newsroom experience. With that experience comes a commitment to accuracy and ethics—two pillars of journalistic excellence.

Our team members treat the news-gathering and news-reporting processes at PlayiLottery with the utmost professionalism, just like they did at the esteemed outlets they worked for previously, including USA TODAY, Sports Illustrated, and Bleacher Report, as well as the Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Des Moines Register.

Members of the PlayiLottery team have received professional awards from the Associated Press, Pennsylvania Society of Professional Journalists, Keystone Press Association, Iowa Newspaper Association, and San Diego Press Club.

Get in touch

We’ve got a Contact Us page that lists all the information you’ll need to reach the person you’re looking for via email.

If you’d like to call or mail something to us, here’s that info:

Catena Media US, Inc.
8565 S. Eastern Avenue, Suite 150
Las Vegas, NV 89123
702-941-6632

PlayiLottery advertising disclosure

PlayiLottery is a part of Catena Media. Sometimes, sites across Catena Media may receive a commission if certain links are clicked and users create accounts with a third-party operator.

However, those third-party operators do not influence the content published on any Catena Media site. All content is produced independently, and all opinions are our own.

Currently, no links on PlayiLottery would lead to compensation for the site.

About PlayiLottery