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game sales FY2015 it currently ranks in the Top 10 lotteries
worldwide for instant game per capita sales. Scientific Games
provides 95 percent of its instant games, which represented
67 percent of the Lottery’s revenues last year. In FY2015, the
Lottery returned a whopping $1.5 billion to its beneficiaries –
breaking a record for the sixth year in a row for both sales and
funding for beneficiaries.
Following the
CSP
success in Florida, Jim Kennedy, now Group
Chief Executive of Lottery for Scientific Games, assigned
Wakasugi to service customers on the west coast of the U.S.,
and work on the instant games business for state lotteries
in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Indiana,
Illinois, Texas and Arizona.
Sam eventually became Vice President of North American
Sales, guiding relationships and strategies for the company’s
instant game customers. He also worked on the UK National
Lottery’s instant games, as well as several other projects in
Europe, Taiwan and Mexico.
And then, Kennedy asked him for a personal favor. Would
Sam be willing to go to Beijing for 30 days to help launch
instant games for the China Sports Lottery in time for the
2008 Olympics? Wakasugi packed his suitcase for the trip. The
launch was a success at an enormous scale. In nine months,
the China Sports Lottery’s instant game sales went from $700
million RMB to $10 billion RMB. By 2011—with the company’s
CSP
best practices deployed in 31 provinces throughout the
world’s largest country—sales doubled to $20 billion RMB and
the Lottery skyrocketed to the largest instant game lottery in
the world. Sam didn’t leave China for
seven years.
“For a guy who entered this business
when the only lottery in the U.S.
west of the Mississippi was Arizona,
it has been an incredibly exciting
experience,” he says. “Those Olympic-
themed games in China will never
be forgotten, but what’s even more
memorable is that the
Golden Millions
game we launched in 2009—a game
almost identical to its U.S. predecessor—is still the best-selling
instant game in China today. It comes down to the simple fact
that a good game design, backed by Scientific Games’ best
practices in the area of quality, integrity and security, will sell
well anywhere in the world.”
Now back in the U.S., Sam leads the global
CSP
business for
Scientific Games. Despite his experience working with instant
products around the world, he says he still learns something
new every time he visits a customer or a retailer. He is still
impressed by the sheer magnitude of instant game sales.
“Lottery instant games are an $80.4 billion consumer product
that outperforms most consumer product categories on the
planet. It’s bigger than the global music and movie industries
combined,”he says.“Last year, our domestic
CSP
partners alone
created a combined $1 billion in growth in the category.”
Scientific Games continues to refine its
CSP
program and
drive record growth in instant game retail sales globally. The
North Carolina Education Lottery is the company’s newest
CSP
customer, recently awarding the company a new eight-
year contract.
One of Scientific Games’ most successful
CSP
customers is
the Pennsylvania Lottery—ranked in the world’s Top 10 for
instant per capita sales with more than $2.6 billion in instant
game sales FY2015. The Lottery has achieved over $1 billion
in profits in each of the last three fiscal years.
CSP
launched in
1997, and the Lottery focused on fully developing its instant
game portfolio and growing its retail network to more than
9,000 retailers.
September/October 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // XX
“Lottery instant games are
an $80.4 billion consumer product
that outperforms most consumer
product categories on the planet.
It’s bigger than the global music
and movie industries combined.”
-SamWakasugi
VP, Global
CSP
Services
Scientific Games