casino game provider or your Player Account.
Regulatory Vault:
This component has many names and
is sometimes provided by the gaming commission and some-
times it is a requirement that the operators must have a solution
for themselves. In simplistic terms it’s essentially a black box
that you must send your ecommerce transactions and player data
to so that the gaming commission has a copy of your records that
cannot be altered. There is very little leeway in how this is imple-
mented if you need it to comply with regulation so simply ensure
your supplier is willing to commit that his solution will fulfill the
requirements set forth in the regulation that governs your license.
Other considerations:
The “build quality” of the software:
This applies
to all of the above and is near impossible to figure out from mar-
keting material and sales pitches but it is still important so before
you commit to a buying a product have someone who’s technical
expertise you trust grill the supplier on the way the solution is
put together and how it connects to other solutions. You don’t
want to buy the software equivalent of something that is held
together with blue tack and duct tape or only works perfectly in
total isolation.
Supported channels:
Although this is rapidly chang-
ing there are still many content providers out there that do not
support any channel other than the (t)rusty old PC. Your de-
mand as a modern Lottery should be for solutions that will work
across the whole spectrum of Internet connected devices from
the small, cheap and cheerful Android smartphones, through the
high end smartphones; 5”, 7”, 9” tablets; small to high resolu-
tion PCs and the list goes on... the range of screen sizes and
device types is in practical terms infinite but this is what you
should demand that your content suppliers support. Read up on
responsive web design, as a concept it’s easy for non-technical
people to comprehend and it is quite possibly the way out of this
mess for everyone.
Initial deployment:
Launching your first iLottery site in
a regulated market is far from easy and if the legislation in the
market you are launching in is still being developed, you and
your partners (games, Player Account etc.) are in for one hell of
a ride! Before you pick your partners make sure they are willing
to commit to a launch schedule you are happy with. Working
penalties into the contract is not a bad idea if you can swing it. A
lot of companies have been burnt by picking partners that prom-
ise a day 1 launch and then fail to deliver. Often this is because
the “partner” makes a strategy decision to allocate his resources
elsewhere instead of getting your site live.
Software updates:
Internet technologies are rushing
ahead at a breathtaking speed with no sign of slowing down in
the foreseeable future. The Lottery industry has had the luxury
of Adobe Flash as a common development platform for a good
few years but Flash is rapidly becoming a footnote in the annals
of technologies past. This will mean experimentation with newer
technologies/standards like HTML5 and many updates to iLot-
tery software as browsers change to accommodate HTML5 and
new functionality becomes available, and if the past is any indi-
cation, stuff that “used to work” turns into stuff that “won’t work
at all”. Ask your partners what their software update plan is.
Does the operator have to pay for updates? How often is the soft-
ware updated? How quickly is a critical issue fixed? Etc. Most
content providers will make updates available without charge, or
by just charging for the cost of deployment vs. the whole cost of
development. This is a potential pitfall for Lotteries new to hav-
ing an iLottery site so it’s worth getting the details clear.
Analytics:
This could be an article in and off itself so let’s
keep it brief: 1) Your data is invaluable as it helps you tune your
site and increase your revenue. 2) You may not be able to insert a
tracking module into all the 3rd party content you offer on your
site so ask your content providers about the analytical capabili-
ties of their software. As with so many other things the best way
to start with analytics is to “start using analytics.” Even a basic
implementation of Google Analytics will tell you a lot and you
can tune what you track and how you track it as you go along.
Just don’t go live with your site with no analytics as you try to
figure out the PERFECT analytical solution on paper.
In closing
Let’s talk about what games you should offer through your new
iLottery site. What games to offer depends entirely on the license
you have. In general the best practice is to have all games avail-
able through all channels so that means anything you currently
sell through any channel, including retail, should be available
through your iLottery site as well. In practice there are certain
games that only work in certain channels. A classic example of
this is multiplayer poker which would be a very strange game to
play through a traditional lottery terminal. Most Lotteries do not
have the license to offer multiplayer poker but the example gets
the point across nicely. Having a healthy mix of different types
of products is desirable and cross selling between these products
can be very successful.
If you have read all three of the articles in this series you
should have a pretty good working understanding of what it takes
to setup a successful iLottery site and what you need to watch out
for when selecting partners for the different aspects of the site.
If the task seems a bit daunting remember that iLottery revenue
is the driving force between the growth of many lotteries around
the world today and some receive over 50% of their revenue from
the interactive (internet) channel already.
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