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May/June 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
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How do you believe the convergence taking
place across gaming channels benefits Euro-
pean players?
K. Anderson:
There are more gam-
ing choices for European consumers than
ever before and Scientific Games products
are more relevant than ever before with the
convergence of gaming channels. We help
our customers more accurately target their
offerings to individual players or segment of
players, ultimately resulting in a better rate of
redemption. Players want to play when they
want, where they want, and how they want
on different devices, whether it’s at retail, in
the home, or on the subway. They want game
entertainment to be more convenient and
more accessible. And of course, there’s also
the desire to collect their winnings without
necessarily going to a store. So new distribu-
tion channels are clearly beneficial to Euro-
pean consumers because of the immediacy.
With the multitude of gaming entertainment
available to consumers, how do lotteries in
Europe adapt to greater competition for the
gaming spend?
K. Anderson:
Most lotteries in Europe
have adapted quite well. They have faced or
are facing deregulation, which opens up their
markets to an array of new gaming compa-
nies entering the marketplace, particularly
in the online or interactive space. There has
always been offshore competition in certain
product areas, most prominently in fixed
odds, sports betting, online casino and pok-
er. New competition definitely has helped
lotteries up their game to become more con-
sumer-focused, to be more judicious about
what, how and when they deliver.
Many of Europe’s most prominent lot-
teries have chosen not to abandon the on-
line space to the competition. They have
added new product lines to their tradition-
al, core businesses, to the extent that it’s no
longer unusual to find that several major
lotteries now include all of the best-known
product verticals in their portfolios. They
have a very broad range of products, from
lottery numbers games to instant games,
bingo, interactive, and in some cases land-
based casino, e-instants, fixed-odds sports
betting, pari-mutuel sports betting, dog
and horse racing, video lottery and vir-
tual sports. Many lotteries deliver these
in specialized outlets, across wide-area
networks—usually their lottery retail net-
work—and via a range of digital devices,
such as smartphones and tablets.
How are lotteries using technology to adapt
to convergence of gaming and lottery markets
and player-ship?
K. Anderson:
Of course technology
has been very instrumental in ensuring
European lotteries’ ability to compete with
these new market entrants, particularly in
the interactive space. Lotteries here have
been quick to react to the competition, and
they were quick to adopt best practices in
the fields of content management and cus-
tomer relationship management, which are
very much enabled by technology. That all-
important relationship with the player is
underpinned by powerful analytical tools.
This has been an area of major focus for
our gaming division and it has been trans-
ported across the broader company, and by
extension to all of our customers globally.
We focus on providing lotteries and gam-
ing operators with tools to drill down and
understand the various segments of player
behavior through the analytics, which are
essential for customized offerings. And of
course, Scientific Games applies our learn-
ings from One
™
, our motivation-based
player segmentation study across lottery
and gaming – the first study of its kind in
the industry. Our study included both the
U.S. and Europe, and the findings are driv-
ing our game and technology innovation.
How can a player account management sys-
tem, such as the one Scientific Games is im-
plementing for Danske Spil, improve lotteries’
understanding of their players?
K. Anderson:
The player account man-
agement system which we are delivering to
Danske Spil is a great example of the value
of our mergers with Bally and WMS. We
now have knowledge from our larger gam-
ing business, knowledge that was previous-
ly in silos or were product-based or were
based on business units.
Our cross-jurisdictional player segmen-
tation study focused on the motivations
behind gaming behavior. When we see
so much competition for the discretion-
ary gaming spend, we know that consum-
ers want to be treated very well. Scientific
Games understands what drives consumers,
what triggers their involvement, what they
like, what turns them off, when they engage,
and when they don’t. It’s why a huge portion
of interactive marketing budgets is devoted
to player acquisition and retention. And yes,
a unified player account management solu-
tion like the one we are delivering to Danske
Spil allows the lottery to be fully conversant
with the behavior of each individual player.
By providing open interfaces, our uni-
fied PAM solution allows the operator to
choose best-of-breed solutions from the
open market, which are then integrated
into one master framework that can ana-
lyze the player’s previous behavior and help
predict future behavior. It can simplify the
management of promotional campaigns
that are better targeted and much more
relevant to the recipient. The unified PAM
gives us a 360-degree perspective that allows
the lottery to track the player, understand
the player, know when to engage with the
player and when not to bother the player.
Ideally this results in less spend on player
retention and in a more satisfied consumer.
We look beyond the operator and the re-
tailer, and we have to get everybody in the
game to value the gaming consumer. It’s
very difficult to win that consumer, it costs
a lot of money, and it can be challenging to
retain their loyalty. If we deliver the right
tools to our lottery customer, and share
our deep understanding of consumers and
games, we can seriously save our customers
money. And that means more net proceeds
from gaming revenues for lotteries.
What can U.S. lotteries learn from their Eu-
ropean counterparts?
K. Anderson:
Overcoming challenges
is tantamount. European lotteries have re-
sponded very well to the threats and chal-
lenges to their erstwhile monopolies, par-
ticularly in the interactive space. Lotteries
in Europe will remain leaders in the sectors
where they have chosen to compete, despite
new market entrants. These lotteries have
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