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// PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // January/February 2016
fiscal number and password by heart.
I wonder how many consumers even knew
about this resource, that they could access
their own personal government file in this
way. The Lottery has performed a valuable
service for helping the people acquire a bet-
ter understanding of these resources which
can help them manage their financial lives.
F. Paes Afonso:
The technology has
been there for a while, but it has been
under-utilized. That’s often the problem
and it is also an opportunity. We can
look at the process, the way we are doing
things, and unlock the hidden capacity
for the tools and infrastructure that al-
ready exists. That’s innovation!
Now this system of using the fiscal
number as a player identifier is being ap-
plied to sports-betting. Player identifica-
tion is more important in sports-betting
because it is a higher risk product than
Lottery. Sports-betting is a much more
fertile ground for criminality like manip-
ulation of the outcomes and money laun-
dering. It was decided that entering the
fiscal number would be a requirement
for sports-betting. But we marketed it as
a tool to protect the safety of the player
and the player’s winnings. The ticket that
is the receipt of the bet has the player’s
fiscal number on it. If it is lost or stolen,
it cannot be redeemed by anyone else. In
fact, it is in the record associated with the
fiscal number who is the rightful owner
of the prize. So, again we use market-
driven tools to modify human behavior,
to appeal to consumers’ own interests as
the reasons why they should adopt the
methods that we want them to adopt.
Anyone who plays online has always
had to register. It is that way in Portu-
gal as it is everywhere in the world. But
now we have a way to entice the land-
based players to enjoy the same benefits
of registration as the online players. And
everyone loves it because they see it as a
benefit to them instead of a burdensome
requirement imposed by us. Of course,
it is a huge benefit to the Lottery too.
It connects us to our entire land-based
player-ship, turning them from anony-
mous consumers into a customer base
that we communicate with on a regular
basis. It is a responsible gaming as well as
a marketing tool.
It is so important for the industry to think
about how to integrate Lottery into the life-
styles of the modern consumer. Instead of
selling a product, you’re connecting to the
broader landscape of the consumers’ every-
day activities and concerns and aspirations.
F. Paes Afonso:
Here is another ex-
ample of that. We know that most of Lot-
tery’s sales are at land-based Retail. That
is still true for everyone, even the Scan-
dinavian countries which have a larger
proportion of online sales. We know that
Lottery has a distinct competitive advan-
tage at Retail. Lottery must compete in
the online world with many other games-
of-chance offers which have higher prize-
payouts than does Lottery. Lottery does
not have that level of competition at Re-
tail. So, we want the consumer to play
the games at Retail, right? Of course we
also want to provide the consumer with
options and to maximize accessibility to
Lottery in all the different channels of
distribution. But most of our sales will
continue to be at Retail and that is al-
right. In fact, it is a good thing.
Now, in Portugal, there is a concern
that young people are spending too
much time online. As a society, there is
concern that we may get out of balance,
that recreation in the form of online
games and socialization in the form of
texting and Facebook is consuming more
and more time, perhaps too much time.
I am not suggesting that video games
and social media are bad or unhealthy in
themselves, just that maybe we can have
too much of a good thing. Television, for
instance, is not bad or unhealthy, but too
much television may not be a good.
We know that trying to dictate behav-
ior is usually not very effective. So, we
need to think like marketers and give
people a reason to modify their behavior,
something that benefits them personally.
So we thought about how our mild cli-
mate and the Latin culture is naturally
social. People just need a reason, even
just an excuse, to leave the virtual world,
get out of the house, and actually interact
with real live human beings in the terres-
trial world. Let’s make the player the cen-
ter of our focus and appeal to their wants
and needs for real live social interaction.
Then we think about how our retailers
have the same goal. They too want peo-
ple to leave their computers, get out of
the house, and visit their stores! The con-
sumer is also at the center of their world-
view. So let’s collaborate together with
our retail partners to accomplish the goal
of giving the consumer more compelling
reasons to come and play the Lottery at
a retail store. And let’s package this cam-
paign to serve a socially valuable role of
creating more balance in peoples’ lives by
replacing Virtual Socialization with real
live Physical Socializing.
Yet another great example of true innova-
tion that is not technology-enabled but pro-
cess-enabled, focusing on how the way that
we interact with the existing environment
can be changed for the better.
F. Paes Afonso:
I should emphasize
Fernando Paes Afonso Interview
…
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