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July/August 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
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small children at home. She orders her groceries online. The pop-
up invites her to buy a lottery ticket. So she adds a lottery ticket
to her purchase. Do you think we’ll ever get to where retail will
become obsolete and we will all do everything online?
Terry Rich:
More and more of our purchasing will be done on-
line. But retail will always be an indispensable option. People will
always want that option and Lottery needs to preserve its place in
the retail shopping environment.
Max Goldstein:
I agree. There is no reason why all lottery gam-
ing could not be conducted on the Mobile. But the consumer will
always want to shop at land-based retail, and that’s good for Lot-
tery. Lottery and Retail have so much in common, so much oppor-
tunity to join forces and enhance the experience for both Lottery
playing and retail shopping.
Terry Rich:
We need to keep the current retail channel alive and
well for Lottery. But we also need to diversify and develop new out-
lets. Otherwise our products and methods of interacting with our
customer will mature and sales will stagnate. Innovation is important.
Rebecca Hargrove:
How are FanDuel and Draft Kings getting
their bills approved by some state legislators?
Rick Weil:
FanDuel, DraftKings and the casino gaming industry
outspend the lottery industry significantly. Influencing regulatory
policy is all about making the appropriate connections and rela-
tionships with legislators.
Bishop Woosley:
From a national standpoint, State Lottery
needs a bigger voice. To do that, we need to create a united front,
speak with one voice. If we don’t do this, our voice will not be heard
in Washington and commercial gaming will take significant bites
out of our share of the games-of-chance market-place.
Terry Rich:
The emergence of FanDuel and Draft Kings does
represents an opportunity for us to reshape our relationship with
our legislators. We can now ask our legislators to consider more se-
riously our requests to have more tools and flexibility to compete in
the marketplace. We can hope that they will allow us to now accept
credit cards and make our products available online.
Rebecca Hargrove:
The technology is there for transactions
to be processed on a multi-purpose terminal instead of having a
dedicated lottery terminal. If you were putting together an RFP/
RFQ for your lottery, would it be a consideration to migrate to a
technology that didn’t require a dedicated lottery terminal?
Bishop Woosley:
A lot of RFPs recently have done just that.
Our industry needs to write RFPs that state that we want to look at
multiple solutions. Our contracts can be 5 and 7 and even 10 year
terms. So we have to build into them the flexibility to integrate new
technology, and adapt to changes in regulatory rules, that are not
available right now.
Rebecca Hargrove:
The digital play-stations would seem to be
a wonderful way to engage the consumer. Is there anything other
than the cost of digital play-stations that’s causing lottery directors
to not move forward with creating a great digital play-station con-
sumer experience to engage the player in land based retail?
Max Goldstein:
The digital play-station could include a ta-
ble, a digital screen, and an iBeacon. Retailers and the consumers
are already using these technologies. We’re just behind the curve.
The ROI and success strategies are already being demonstrated
in the market-place. Our industry just needs to be willing to do
things differently.
Rick Weil:
There are the ROI considerations. Technology doesn’t
come cheap. We’re using this kind of technology in our products.
The win-per-unit from our play-stations enables us to build a rev-
enue share with the operator right into the cost model so there’s no
cost to the lottery. To our mind, and with our product, the answer
is yes, the ROI for digital play-stations is there.
■
From a national standpoint, State
Lottery needs a bigger voice. To do that,
we need to create a united front, speak
with one voice. If we don’t do this, our
voice will not be heard in Washington
and commercial gaming will take
significant bites out of our share of the
games-of-chance market-place.
—Bishop Woosley
We need to look at how self-service can
help people to learn about the products.
That could be just as important as
providing a new transaction-enabled
POS. Presently, the shopper is expected
to ask the retailer how to play.
Neither the shopper nor the retailer
prefers that option.
—Terry Rich