Public Gaming Magazine September-October 2016

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in sales in fiscal 2015 and exceeded last year
sales a month early in FY 2016.
What is an example of something that has been
accomplished that would not have been done
without your partnership with Northstar?
C. Hedinger: Anything that requires
capital investment is a problem for state
lotteries. The ROI on investment may be
very positive, but if it is not in our budget
it’s difficult to fund. Northstar is not con-
strained in that way. For instance, Wawa
is a large multi-state corporate account
with more than 240 stores in New Jersey
alone. But they would not sell Lottery in
a clerk-assisted mode. They would only
sell Lottery in their stores if we installed
self-service vending machines. The NJ
Lottery could not allocate the funds for
those machines along with the develop-
ment of the back-office reporting that
they required. Northstar installed the ma-
chines, developed an accounting system
to meet their needs, and Wawa is now our
largest retail account. I don’t think the
New Jersey Lottery would ever have got-
ten into Wawa without Northstar.
Automating the sales force involved
an investment that the Lottery was not
able to do. Theoretically, there are many
things that could be accomplished by
the state Lottery without entering into
a private-public partnership. But there
are three things about that. First, state
budgeting and management procedures
are just not conducive to operating in a
market-driven business environment. As
far as I can tell, that is true for all state
lotteries, not just New Jersey. Second, a
private enterprise like Northstar is better
at doing many of these things, like ne-
gotiating a multi-state deal with Wawa.
Third, the private-public partnership
effectively outsources the risk of in-
The purpose of the contract was to bring in the human, technological, and economic
resources of a world-class commercial partner. And that is exactly what we have done.
The NJ Lottery has retained total authority and control over every aspect of the
operation, only now it is with the benefit of a partnership
that augments our operation in ways that we could never have otherwise done.