to be a wet noodle, but it shouldn’t have taken five years to get that
off the ground. It’s up to us to reconfigure so we can move from
concept to launch within a much tighter timeline. All of us, all of
the lotteries, need to sit at one table to decide the future for both
games. I would submit that we need to find a way to merge the
two groups, MUSL and the Mega Millions consortium. I think that
goes to Connie’s point about fear of change. That would be a big
change and it takes guts and vision to make that kind of a change.
But it needs to be done. Perhaps we should also be afraid of the
outcomes of not changing, of continuing on the same path? In my
opinion, we will never accomplish our goals without solving these
governance issues.
R. Hargrove:
I hope and expect that the new governance struc-
ture for our national premium game will be a step towards making
that happen. Connie, I want to piggyback on something you said
about national branding and how powerful that would be for the
consumer. On Monday, May Scheve met with some retail execu-
tives of the big national chain stores. If we want to get into the
national retailers we need a national voice and a national look.
They don’t want to advertise our product one way in Tennessee
and another way in Kentucky, and another way in Indiana, and an-
other way in Illinois. So I think the sooner we can get to a national
branding, the easier it will be for May and her committee to help
us get in to these national retailers.
We have covered a lot of ground today. We have not talked about
the important topic of how social networking and social gaming
will be integrated into the multi-state gaming platform. Suffice to
say that is high on the agenda too.
As you can see, we are in a good place right now. The New Pre-
mium Game has the potential to be truly transformational. More
and more lotteries are recognizing the importance of nationalizing
our strategies as well as the need to evolve our game management
structures to facilitate cooperation and unified action. But as you
can also see, there are many unresolved issues. As an industry, we
tend to rally for action when times are tough, and be less inclined
to change anything when jackpots are rolling. It shouldn’t be that
way. The time to drive hard for innovation and progress is when
we are strong and have the wiggle room to take risks. That’s the
way peak performers in the commercial world look at it and that’s
the way we should look at it too. Let’s not wait for things to reach
crisis proportions before we take the positive action that will set us
on a course for long-term success.
Gary Grief, Carole Hedinger, Stephen Martino, Charlie McIntyre,
Connie Laverty-O’Conner—Thank you very much, Panelists!
u
On Governance of the Multi-State Games
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