SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016
• The Private-Public Partnership in Action
• How Regulatory Changes
are Converging with Technology,
the Internet, and Changing Consumer
Behavior to Up-end the Games-of-
Chance and Lottery Market-Place
• Sales Force Automation as the Key to
Improving Retail Performance
PGRI
Tom Delacenserie
Application
Programming Interface
(API) as the key to a
sustainable future
for Lottery
FEATURED INTERVIEWS
Nikos Nikolakopoulos
Kevin Sheehan
Alice Garland
Sam
Wakasugi
Changing the Game in 2016 and Beyond
As another NASPL conference approaches, and we look to the end of a historic year,
PGRI
spoke to Marco
Tasso, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing, and Paul Riley, Vice President of Innovation, t IGT about
the major milestones of 2016 and the future of the lottery industry.
Last year at NASPL, IGT unveiled
Aurora, your new business plat-
form. What has been its reception in
the industry? What progress have you
made in its development and rollout?
P. Riley:
The reception to Aurora
TM
has been
overwhelmingly positive, due in no small
part to two major items. The first is our laser
focus on end-user usability. Our completely
revampedUser Interface (Aurora
TM
Navigator)
that sits on top of our feature-rich back-
office suite of applications, makes the jobs of
lottery personnel much more efficient and
effective. The expanded access to business
intelligence in a graphic, visualized approach
also makes folks’ jobs easier. The second is
our Service Oriented Architecture. Lotteries
are increasingly interested in a solution that
supports omni-channel engagement with
players, and the ability for lotteries to easily mix
and match components from various vendors
– and with Aurora, we can deliver on those
key needs. We are in the process of rolling our
initial Aurora deployments out in the U.S. and
have been having discussions with our global
customer base about Aurora.
What is IGT doing to remain in
the forefront of lottery services and
technology?
M. Tasso:
Knowledge of the player and
retailer is at the heart of how we approach
innovation at IGT. We will continue to invest
in research and development to ensure that
our lottery partners receive the most cutting-
edge systems and terminals as well as the
most relevant game concepts. By combining
our investment in innovation with our player
intelligence and our operational expertise, we
help our lottery partners achieve sustainable
and responsible growth.
How does IGT stay in touch with the
needs of players?
M. Tasso:
Our Player Insights Team
constantly collaborates with our customers
to conduct studies to understand the
wants, needs, and expectations of retailers
and players around the world. In the last 12
months, we’ve conducted more than 260
studies in the Americas and 62 internationally.
That’s more than 224,000 people that IGT
has talked with in the last year. We are also
continuing our World Player Study, which
captures the attitudes and opinions of lottery
players in 10 countries. It’s this comprehensive
data set that feeds the actionable insights that
drives growth for our customers.
How has that affected the develop-
ment of new games?
M. Tasso:
As game portfolios and the
playerbase continue to age, lotteries need to
have a partner that is vested in the ongoing
development of game concepts. IGT has
created FutureGame, an eight-step game
development and testing framework to
satisfy our customers’ need for a constant
stream of new games. To thoroughly leverage
player needs and emotions, the FutureGame
process begins with a series of insights and
trend diagnostics and ends with a complex
methodology of consumer and retailer
research. In addition, and to ensure we are
constantly on the forefront of interactive
games, we have pooled the resources of
120 software engineers, artists, and game
designers from around the world to create the
IGT Game Studio. By combining the staff’s
unique approach to art and science along with
the cultural nuances of our five worldwide
studio locations, we release at least seven new
game concepts per quarter.
As much as the U.S. lottery industry
talks about the importance of interac-
tive and omni-channel approaches,
progress appears to be slow due to
legislation and other concerns. What
advancement has been made in the
last year?
P. Riley:
Slow and steady are perhaps the
operative words for the U.S. with respect
to interactive wagering. Illinois, Michigan,
and Georgia are still leading the industry
with their respective deployments and are
being joined by Kentucky and Virginia. We
have seen continued growth in the number
of mobile apps that IGT is providing as well
as the functionality that is deployed. We
currently support seven lottery apps on both
iOS and Android, all of which have a suite of
player convenience features, and some that
also allow wagering where permissible. These
apps also support omni-channel interaction,
such as scanning for a winning ticket and then
directing the consumer to the nearest retailer
for redemption, or creating digital playslips
that are more user friendly as well as fast and
easy for retailers to use.
What developments are you most
excited about?
P. Riley:
We are very excited about the
potential to leverage interactive platforms
MarcoTasso,SeniorVicePresidentofProductMarketing
Marco
Tasso
and games to deliver a compelling player
experience while still complying with internet
wagering constraints. Our PlaySpot on-
premise solution, which we hope to deploy
later this year, will allow players to use their
mobile phones to play lottery games on
their own terms, without having to access
the internet. We are also actively engaged in
a pilot for proximity marketing that uses an
existing lottery app and beacons placed at
lottery retailers to deliver targeted messaging
and offers (lottery and retail partners) to
consumers, and we look forward to sharing
some of what we have learned there once we
have been operational long enough to gather
ome meaningful data.
What were the bigg st milestones
and developments of the past year?
M. Tasso:
One of the best examples of our
player-first thinking this year is the Gemini
Touch. We turned our understanding of the
shoppers’ need for convenience, simplicity,
and interactivity into an immersive self-
service vending experience featuring a
high-definition, 42-inch touch monitor. Both
players and non-players are attracted to the
dynamic graphics and large touch screen
P. Riley:
Powerball was of course huge in so
many ways. Operationally, the team and the
systems delivered. More than 234,000 rolls of
paper were used; that’s enough to go around
the world 1.5 times. More than 15.5 million
playslips were produced, and our 185,000
terminals functioned at 99.9% uptime. From
an awareness perspective, the media hype
surrounding the record jackpot was priceless.
The key question is how do we parlay that
interest intoengaging newplayersona repeat
basis. Monumental events like this provide
opportunities to engage more consumers
and expand the player base, particularly with
something like the mobile apps which we just
discussed. The jackpot was also a great value
to retailers. Retailers had to acknowledge the
history-making lift in traffic and ancillary sales
that the jackpot drove.
What tre ds are you s i g in the
world of gaming and lottery?
P. Riley:
There’s a lot of interest in cashless,
which is good because so many of our
consumers are embracing cashless, BUT
it is not a trivial topic due to regulatory
considerations, technology aspects, and last,
but not least, economic implications. We are
doingapilot inconjunctionwithourcustomer,
the Georgia Lottery Corporation, and are
collecting data on usage and transactions to
support better insights into the benefits and
challenges concerning this topic.
How do you stay current on what
players and retailers respond to?
M.Ta so:
OurLotteryManagementServices
groupcontinues tobe the incubator forprofit-
driving strategies and tactics. Lottomatica
remains the standard for lottery growth
around t e world with ore than $16 billion
in annual sales. The IGT Indiana and Hoosier
Lottery teams also provide a great example
of the synergies that develop when you have
a solid portfolio f games working along-side
business intelligence tools such as Aurora
TM
commitment to corporate social responsibility
and achieving WLA Level 4 Certification.
What are you most excited about for
the year ahead?
M. Tasso:
Our business intelligence tools,
which are already the best in the industry,
keep getting stronger. Our BI tools create
actionable insights that empower quicker,
more effective decision-making. For
example, the Retail Marketing Insight (RMI)
platform is now capturing data from 21 U.S.
lotteries to provide visual comparisons across
retail chains and jurisdictions. Aurora
TM
Performance Intel is using state-of-the-art
analytics to turn mountains of data into real-
time strategies and tactics. Plus, with the
acquisition of Hudson Alley, we have paired
OnePlace with Aurora
TM
Retailer Wizard to
provide Lottery Representatives and their
retailers with the real-time data they need to
efficiently manage and successfully grow their
businesses. All of these tools work together
to empower lotteries with a consistent and
insightful view of their businesses.
P. Riley:
NASPL has signed a declaration
to move forward with establishing a lottery
standardAPI (ApplicationProgram Interface)
that could provide significant benefit to the
industry in cost effectively increasing lottery
into under-penetrated or non-penetrated
retailers. The initiative is about setting up a
standard way for retailers to communicate
with lottery transaction processing vendors
in a uniform manner that more aligns with
the way in which they sell many of their other
goods. If we penetrate more retailers and
tradestyles and very importantly – offer our
products in the multi-lane environments – we
have a chance to engage far more consumers
and increase awareness of the lottery brand
and the good causes lotteries support.
To learn more about IGT’s plans for 2017
and beyond, visit their booth at NASPL 2016
in Atlanta.
PaulRiley,VicePresidentof Innovation
Paul
Riley
Tracey
Cohen
Vernon
Kirk
Carole
Hedinger